When Siang Lu found out he’d won the Miles Franklin literary award, he had a physical reaction. “I was in such shock that I lost all feeling in my hands and legs,” the Brisbane-based author says. “I teared up. I lost my voice a little bit. It was the first time in my life that I’ve ever had to ask someone with a straight face, ‘Can you just please confirm to me that I’m not dreaming?’”
The feeling Lu describes is akin to the surreal nature of his experimental, prize-winning novel, Ghost Cities. 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”.
