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
Hoppla, I time travelled too far... Argh, my face! My faaaace!
Albert Einstein, 2938
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