Ghost Cities

Siang Lu

Apr 2024 · Univ. of Queensland Press

About this ebook

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 re-created, page by page and book by book, all in the name of love and art? Allegorical and imaginative, Ghost Cities will appeal to readers of Haruki Murakami and Italo Calvino.

About the author

Siang Lu is the author of Ghost Cities and The Whitewash, and the co-creator of The Beige Index. The Whitewash won the ABIA Audiobook of the Year in 2023 for its audio adaptation. It also won the Glendower Award for an emerging writer in the Queensland Literary Awards and was shortlisted for a NSW Premier's Literary Award. In 2023 Siang was named one of the Top 40 Under 40 Asian-Australians at the Asian-Australian Leadership Awards. He has written for film and television for Singapore's Beach House Pictures and Malaysia's Astro network.