SPECULATIVE FICTION / LITERARY FICTION

Ghost Cities

Siang Lu

CHF 27.90

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ABOUT THE BOOK

Winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2025
Shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal 2025
Shortlisted for the Voss Literary Prize 2025
Shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards – University of Queensland Fiction Book Award 2024
Shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards – John Clarke Prize for Humour Writing 2025
Shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year 2025
Shortlisted for the Russell Prize for Humour Writing 2025
Shortlisted for the Ditmar Award for Best Novel 2025
Shortlisted for the Readings New Australian Fiction Prize 2024

An award-winning novel from an international rising star - spanning ancient and modern China - in the dazzlingly inventive style of Haruki Murakami and Kaliane Bradley

Inspired by the vacant, uninhabited megacities of China, Ghost Cities 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. The incident goes viral under the hashtag #BadChinese and attracts the attention of the eccentric film director Baby Bao, who uses Xiang to attract press for his latest film. Bao's movie, based on ancient legends, is to be filmed in one of China's "ghost cities".

How is his relocation to a 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?

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