<b>Winner of the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award</b><br/><br/><b><i>Ghost Cities</i> - 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.</b><br/><br/><br/><b>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?</b><br/><br/><br/><b>Allegorical and imaginative, <i>Ghost Cities</i> will appeal to readers of Haruki Murakami and Italo Calvino.</b><br/><br/>Winner, 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award<br/>Shortlisted, 2025 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards - John Clarke Prize for Humour Writing<br/>Shortlisted, 2024 Queensland Literary Awards - The University of Queensland Fiction Book Award<br/>Shortlisted, 2024 Queensland Literary Awards - The Courier-Mail People's Choice Queensland Book of the Year Award<br/>Shortlisted, ALS Gold Medal 2025<br/>Shortlisted, 2025 Russell Prize for Humour Writing<br/>Shortlisted, 2025 The Age Book of the Year<br/>Shortlisted, The Readings New Australian Fiction Prize 2024<br/><br/>