Cover art for Ghost Cities
Published
University Of Queensland Press, April 2024
ISBN
9780702268496
Format
Softcover, 304 pages
Dimensions
22.5cm × 15.3cm × 2.4cm

Ghost Cities Shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2025

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Winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2025

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?

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