Rejected 200+ times, Ghost Cities wins major book prize
Liz Hobday |
Brisbane writer Siang Lu has won the Miles Franklin Literary Award for his comical novel Ghost Cities, after more than 200 publishers rejected the manuscript.
And the 39-year-old author isn’t joking when he says he was shocked to find out he had won the $60,000 prize after being shortlisted for the first time.
“I just sat down and actually lost all feeling in my hands and legs, and I lost my voice,” he said.
“It was one of the first times in my life where I actually had to ask someone with complete seriousness, to just tell me that I wasn’t dreaming.”
Australia’s most prestigious literary award was announced at a ceremony in Sydney on Thursday night, at which Lu revealed that he finished the manuscript for Ghost Cities a decade ago in 2015, but it was rejected more than 200 times by publishers in Australia and overseas.
“I used to print my rejections and Blu Tack them on the glass pane between my office, and my bedroom. My youngest child, Madeleine, had just been born – she is nine now – and she would nap on that big bed while I worked and kept an eye on her,” he said in his acceptance speech.
“The rejections kept piling up. Eventually, they grew so numerous that I could no longer see through the glass, into the bedroom where my daughter slept.”
Having finally been published by University of Queensland Press, the winning book has been described by critics as both intellectually ambitious and zany, and by the Miles Franklin judges as a “genuine landmark” in Australian literature.
“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,” the judges said.
“Shimmering with satire and wisdom, and with an absurdist bravura, Ghost Cities is a genuine landmark in Australian literature.”
Lu says his win changes things dramatically – not only financially, but in terms of recognition for the quality of his work.
Ghost Cities was inspired by megacities built in China during the nation’s real estate boom, many of which have been left uninhabited and falling into ruin.
It weaves together multiple stories – including that of a young man who is fired from his job as a translator at the Chinese consulate in Sydney, when it is discovered he is monolingual and has been relying on Google Translate.
There’s also a chess automaton with a secret, and an ancient emperor who creates a thousand replicas of himself.
Since his novel hit the shelves in 2024, Lu has found what he describes as a perverse joy in chatting to his readers, as they try to guess what Ghost Cities is actually saying.
The answer is less complex than readers might imagine: “It is trying to be funny,” he promises.
Siang Lu’s debut novel was 2022’s The Whitewash, while his online tracking project The Beige Index – described as “the Bechdel Test for race” in the film industry – has found an audience worldwide.
The 2025 shortlist was dominated by writers of colour, including veteran Brian Castro, who has made the shortlist four times, and two-time winner Michelle de Kretser.
The six authors shortlisted for the Miles Franklin also receive $5000 from the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.
AAP
