WINNER OF THE MILES FRANKLIN AWARD

SHORTLISTED FOR THE AGE BOOK OF THE YEAR

Perfect for fans of Haruki Murakami, Ghost Cities is a profound and highly imaginative novel that cleverly draws on Chinese history to explore the absurdity of modern life and work.

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?

Allegorical and imaginative, Ghost Cities will appeal to listeners of Haruki Murakami and Italo Calvino.

‘I love Ghost Cities. The inventiveness, the genius of it all — it is like the lovechild of Viet Thanh Nguyen crossed with Gabriel Garcia Marquez crossed with Kevin Kwan. It is nuts, and deep, and moving, and also funny.’ ALICE PUNG

‘I want to crumple this novel into a ball and swallow it, whole.’ HAYLEY SCRIVENOR

‘A funny and fascinating book that I can’t wait to read again and again.’ TARA JUNE WINCH

‘A novel that delights… in the very best of ways.’ KATE MILDENHALL

‘… a stunning piece of writing. It’s quite a feat to create one labyrinth in a book in a way that’s intricate and convincing, but somehow Siang Lu creates two that are, places them centuries apart and makes them act as mirrors to each other.’ NICK EARLS