Winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2025
Ghost Cities - inspired by the vacant, uninhabited megacities of China - follows multiple narratives, including one in which a young man named Xiang is fired from his job as a translator at Sydney's Chinese Consulate after it is discovered he doesn't speak a word of Chinese and has been relying entirely on Google Translate for his work.
How is his relocation to one such ghost city connected to a parallel odyssey in which an ancient Emperor creates a thousand doubles of Himself? Or where a horny mountain gains sentience? Where a chess-playing automaton hides a deadly secret? Or a tale in which every book in the known Empire is destroyed - then recreated, page by page and book by book - all in the name of love and art?
Ingenious in its construction, Siang Lu layers myth and reality into a marvelous structure. This is bold, inventive storytelling, a novel of ideas that never loses its heart.
Charles Yu, National Book Award-winning author of Interior Chinatown
... it’s a blast. A BLAST. I’m not sure it’s possible to enjoy reading a book more than I enjoyed reading Ghost Cities... kaleidoscopically erudite, inexhaustibly lyrical, moving, and fabulously funny.
Mark Leyner, author of The Sugar Frosted Nutsack
and Et Tu, Babe
... a surprising melange of wonder, intelligence and humour from the first pages to the last...
Lu has a brilliant mind for style, language, pace and ideas, and this is a funny and fascinating book that I can't wait to read again and again.
Tara June Winch, Miles Frankling-winning author of The Yield
I want to crumple this novel into a ball and swallow it, whole.
Hayley Scrivenor, author of Dirt Town and Girl Falling
Siang Lu's Ghost Cities is so incredible I invented time travel just so I could go into the future and read it.
Albert Einstein, 2026
Arabic (Al Amal al Kubra)
Brazil (Grupo Editorial Record)
Crotia (Fraktura)
Czechia (Nakladatelsvi LEDA)
Estonia (Rahva Raamat)
Germany (Eichborn)
Greece (Alexandria)
Hong Kong (Hunter)
Hungary (Europa)
Iceland (Kver)
Japan (Shueisha)
Korea (Moonji)
Poland (Poznanskie)
Portugal (Porto Editora)
Romania (Humanitas)
Serbia (Only Smiley)
Slovakiia (Motyl)
Spain (Urano)
Taiwan (Linking)
Ukraine (Beagle Publishing)
Hoppla, I time travelled too far... Argh, my face! My faaaace!