Ghost Cities

An award-winning novel from an international rising star - spanning ancient and modern China - in the dazzlingly inventive style of Haruki Murakami and Kaliane Bradley Inspired by the vacant, uninhabited megacities of China, Ghost Cities 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. The incident goes viral under the hashtag #BadChinese and attracts the attention of the eccentric film director Baby Bao, who uses Lu to attract press for his latest film. Bao`s movie, based on ancient legends, is to be filmed in one of China`s "ghost cities". How is his relocation to a 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 recreated, page by page and book by book-all in the name of love and art?