Ghost Cities by Siang Lu shortlisted for The Readings Prize 2024

Congratulations to Siang Lu on his shortlisting nomination for the 2024 Readings Prize, for his novel Ghost Cities.

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, which starred a large and diverse cast of fourteen actors. It also won the Glendower Award for an emerging writer at the Queensland Literary Awards and was shortlisted for a NSW Premier’s Literary Award.

In 2023 he was named one of the Top 40 Under 40 Asian-Australians at the Asian-Australian Leadership Awards.

Siang holds a Master of Letters from the University of Sydney and has written for film and television for Singapore's Beach House Pictures and Malaysia's Astro network.

He is based in Brisbane, Australia, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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.

The Readings Prize is unique in the literary landscape – a commitment by an independent. Melbourne bookshop to financially reward and promote Australian debut and second-time authors of Children’s, Young Adult and Fiction.

First established in 2014, The Readings Prize aims to support and champion new and outstanding Australian voices.

The winner of each category will be announced at a ceremony on Tuesday, 22 October. The winner of each category will receive $5,000.

'This year’s shortlisted authors range from First Nations authors, whose storytelling ancestors trace back more than 40,000 years, to children of recent immigrants, who write about straddling two cultures and sometimes feeling as if they don’t quite belong to either. All the shortlisted books reflect a commitment to the craft of writing and even the stories for the youngest will capture the imaginations of readers of all ages.’ - Readings Prize Manager, Angela Crocombe.

You can see the full shortlist here.

Congratulations again to Siang!