Ghost Cities

Reviews / Votes

'Siang Lu layers myth and reality into a marvelous structure. This is bold, inventive storytelling, a novel full of ideas that never loses its heart.' Charles Yu, US National Book Award-winning author of Interior Chinatown

'Kaleidoscopically erudite, inexhaustibly lyrical, moving, and fabulously funny. This is the pizza pie with every conceivable and inconceivable topping. There are immortal sages, concubines, eunuchs, moonlit pagodas, assassins, chess, Bentley limousines, psychedelic whiskey, the cinema, crazed auteurs (hats off to Siang Lu for creating "Baby Bao," one of the great literary characters, up there with Huysmans' Esseintes, Heathcliff, and Hannibal Lecter). And there's a love story. And when the iridescent effulgence of all this eases, you're left with the beautiful and elemental image of the solitary Writer, of Siang Lu, secluded in that hidden room at the center of his labyrinth, his brush "dancing on the page".' Mark Leyner, author of The Sugar Frosted Nutsack.

'Moving and deeply funny-a captivating exploration of how our drive to create can lead to both heartbreaking beauty and cruel destruction. Lu reminds us that broken things are sometimes in their perfect form.' Daniel H. Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Hole in the Sky

'Lu has a brilliant mind for style, language, pace and ideas; a funny and fascinating book that I can't wait to read again and again' Guardian (Australia)

'Set between modern and ancient times, and inspired by the vacant megacities of China, the sprawling, ambitious novel is shot through with absurdist humour, cultural commentary and satire in what the Miles Franklin judges describe as "at once a grand farce and a haunting meditation on diaspora", and "a genuine landmark in Australian literature".' Guardian (Australia)

'Audacious, stimulating and "utterly bonkers": Siang Lu, the thrilling new face of Australian literature... Lu's writing is the work of a curious mind at play. His labyrinthine novels take the reader on wild rides as disparate threads collide in surprising, sometimes unhinged ways... Lu stands out in the often staid Australian literary world for his work's originality and its audacity, using absurdist humour to explore race and racism... Ghost Cities is a sprawling, twisty novel that takes the reader down mazelike paths with no obvious beginnings or endings... Lu's work is intellectually stimulating while also being utterly bonkers - and that's the point.' Guardian (Australia)

'Siang Lu's?Ghost Cities?is at?once a grand farce and a haunting meditation on diaspora. Sitting within a tradition in Australian writing that explores failed expatriation and cultural fraud, Lu's novel is also something strikingly new... Shimmering with satire and wisdom and with an absurdist bravura,?Ghost Cities?is?a genuine landmark in Australian literature.' The judges of the Miles Franklin Award

'In?Ghost Cities?Lu gleefully spins... elaborate, orientalist-adjacent historical fantasies - complete with mysterious fables, esoteric riddles and marvellous inventions... It is the story of impostors in a world of impostors... Just as you think you know where you are in?Ghost Cities' narrative labyrinth, or which unreliable narrator is guiding you through it, Siang Lu pulls the rug out, switches voice and reveals yet another layer to the story... He references... everything from?Paradise Lost?to?Scheherazade?(a man spins stories night after night to otherwise distract a woman bent on using him for revenge sex) and Calvino's?Invisible Cities, not to mention every implausibly plausible orientalist fantasy about emperors, concubines and the nature of "Eastern wisdom". Yet in the midst of this clamour ring bells of truth and insight... This is a carnival ride of a novel, occasionally dizzying, sometimes moving and often very funny. Whatever it is, its author is a?true original.' The Saturday Paper

'Lu's book is an intricate tapestry of narratives - stories within?stories?about?storytelling - that will beguile and reward those willing to engage with its patterns, shapes and form... By turns bombastic then delicate, dizzyingly inscrutable then disarmingly matter-of-fact... The innocent, fable-like quality... beautifully offsets the breadth of imagination, dark humour, as well as the complex (and admittedly sometimes perplexing) interconnectivity, at play... Both mordantly funny and oddly poignant... ??Those wishing to dwell in the impressive?Ghost Cities, to explore its labyrinthine qualities, will be rewarded by finding patterns in its beauty, and building meaning of their own.' ArtsHub