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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 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.
Author: Siang Lu
Paperback Published 30 April 2024 304 pages
‘Ghost Cities is a labyrinth of a novel that delights, terrifies, thrills and amuses in the very best of ways. An inventive and philosophical exploration of power, automation, art and love where nothing is as it seems; a decadent feast fashioned from tofu, a lush orchard carved from stone. Siang Lu’s brain at play is a thing of wonder.’ Kate Mildenhall