Latest news with #TheWhitewash
Indian Express
24-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Who is Siang Lu, whose novel ‘Ghost Cities' just won Australia's biggest literary award
Chinese Malaysian Australian author Siang Lu has won the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award – Australia's most prestigious literary prize – for his absurdist novel Ghost Cities, which masterfully weaves together parallel stories. 'I am honoured beyond belief, and beyond words,' Lu said after winning the prestigious award. 'I didn't dare dream of this. It didn't seem possible.' Lu receives AUD $60,000 (approx ₹33.6 lakh) in prize money as part of the award. The win was not exactly a surprise. Ghost Cities had already been shortlisted for six major awards and Lu was being compared to literary giants such as Haruki Murakami, Gabriel García Márquez, and even Kevin Kwan. Its publisher, University of Queensland Press, called it 'a profound and highly imaginative novel' that 'cleverly draws on Chinese history to explore the absurdity of modern life and work.' The judges called it 'a genuine landmark in Australian literature.' Lu's novel unfolds across multiple timelines and realities: in one strand, a young man named Xiang is fired from his job at the Chinese consulate in Sydney after it is discovered he doesn't speak a word of Chinese and has been relying entirely on Google Translate. He relocates to a mysterious, uninhabited megacity, one of China's infamous 'ghost cities,' and from there the narrative explodes into a kaleidoscope of myth and mirage. How is Xiang's quiet exile connected to a long-dead Emperor who creates a thousand doubles of himself? Or to a mountain that gains sentience and a libido? Or to a chess-playing automaton that harbours a deadly secret? In Lu's world, everything is metaphor and everything is literal. Lu first caught readers' attention with The Whitewash, his 2022 debut about the unraveling of a fictional Hollywood film meant to 'smash the bamboo ceiling.' That novel, styled as a mock oral history, satirised the politics of representation in the entertainment industry, and won the ABIA Audiobook of the Year with its pioneering cast of majority Asian-Australian actors. Where The Whitewash tackled race and pop culture, Ghost Cities zooms out to empire, language, and time. It is, as author Nick Earls put it, 'a stunning piece of writing. It's quite a feat to create one labyrinth in a book… but somehow Siang Lu creates two… and makes them act as mirrors to each other.' The novel has exploding libraries, shape-shifting doubles, and government functionaries who cannot speak the languages of their own bureaucracy. And there's Xiang, a kind of anti-hero, wandering through ghost cities that might be metaphors, or might just be real. Lu, who splits his time between Brisbane and Kuala Lumpur, does not court the solemnity that often clings to literary success. When his publisher made him start an author Instagram, he went rogue, launching #sillybookstagram, a feed full of Photoshopped book covers that deface his friends' work with pure nonsense. 'Why waste time write book when Silly PhotoShop do trick?' he writes, tongue firmly in cheek. A post shared by Siang Lu (@sianglu_author) Author Alice Pung put it best: 'The inventiveness, the genius of it all – it is like the lovechild of Viet Thanh Nguyen crossed with Gabriel Garcia Marquez crossed with Kevin Kwan. It is nuts, and deep, and moving, and also funny.' Lu also co-created The Beige Index, a digital project critiquing racial representation in film and media. Alongside fellow shortlist authors – Brian Castro (Chinese Postman), Michelle de Kretser (Theory and Practice), Winnie Dunn (Dirt Poor Islanders), Julie Janson (Compassion) and Fiona McFarlane (Highway 13) – he represents a new wave of writers reshaping the national canon. A post shared by Miles Franklin Literary Award (@milesfranklinliteraryaward) This year's judging panel—Richard Neville, Jumana Bayeh, Mridula Nath Chakraborty, Tony Hughes-d'Aeth, and Hsu-Ming Teo—described Lu's novel as 'sitting within a tradition in Australian writing that explores failed expatriation and cultural fraud' while also being 'strikingly new.' 'In Ghost Cities, the Sino-Australian imaginary appears as a labyrinthine film-set,' the judges wrote, 'where it is never quite clear who is performing and who is directing.' Jane Magor, speaking on behalf of award trustee Perpetual, said Lu's win 'redefines what Australian literature can be….Our stories are ever-changing…. And the literary tradition Miles Franklin envisioned continues to grow in daring and unexpected ways.' The Miles Franklin Literary Award, established in 1957, was set up to honour a work of 'highest literary merit' that presents 'Australian life in any of its phases.' Aishwarya Khosla is a journalist currently serving as Deputy Copy Editor at The Indian Express. Her writings examine the interplay of culture, identity, and politics. She began her career at the Hindustan Times, where she covered books, theatre, culture, and the Punjabi diaspora. Her editorial expertise spans the Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Punjab and Online desks. She was the recipient of the The Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections, where she studied political campaigns, policy research, political strategy and communications for a year. She pens The Indian Express newsletter, Meanwhile, Back Home. Write to her at or You can follow her on Instagram: @ink_and_ideology, and X: @KhoslaAishwarya. ... Read More
Perth Now
24-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Chinese-Australian author wins major award
First time author Siang Lu has won the prestigious $60,000 Miles Franklin literary award for his novel, Ghost Cities, described as 'a genuine landmark in Australian literature'. It was rejected more than 200 times, both in Australia and overseas, and stayed in a drawer unpublished for 10 years before Lu's first novel The Whitewash was published. Ghost Cities is about a young Chinese-Australian man who is fired from his translator job at the Chinese consulate after it is discovered he cannot speak Mandarin. The deception goes viral on Chinese social media, with Xiang dubbed #BadChinese. 'Siang Lu's Ghost Cities is at once a grand farce and a haunting meditation on diaspora,' the judges said. Siang Lu has won the 2025 Miles Franklin Award. Supplied Credit: Supplied Ghost Cities was unpublished for 10 years after 200 rejections. Credit: Supplied 'Sitting within a tradition in Australian writing that explores failed expatriation and cultural fraud, Lu's novel is also something strikingly new. 'Shimmering with satire and wisdom, and with an absurdist bravura, Ghost Cities is a genuine landmark in Australian literature.' On winning the award, Lu, 39, said he was 'honoured beyond belief, and beyond words'. 'I didn't dare dream of this. It didn't seem possible.' Lu, who is of Chinese-Malaysian descent, moved with his family moved from Malaysia to Brisbane in the 1990s when he was four. The 2025 judging panel comprised Richard Neville, Jumana Bayeh, Dr Mridula Nath Chakraborty, Prof Tony Hughes-d'Aeth, and author, Prof Hsu-Ming Teo. The Miles Franklin literary award was established in the will of My Brilliant Career author, Stella Miles Franklin, for the 'advancement, improvement and betterment of Australian literature'. Perpetual serves as Trustee for the Award.
ABC News
24-07-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Miles Franklin Literary Award won by Siang Lu for part-fable, part-rom-com Ghost Cities
Siang Lu has won one of Australia's most prestigious book prizes, the $60,000 Miles Franklin Literary Award, for his part-fable, part-rom-com novel Ghost Cities. The Chinese Malaysian Australian author says he's "overwhelmed" by his win. "[I feel] super joyful, super excited, but it's a lot to take in." Perhaps that's in part because for almost 10 years the book languished, unpublished, in Lu's drawer. It was rejected more than 200 times, both in Australia and overseas. Then in 2022 — after winning an unpublished manuscript award at the Queensland Literary Awards — he published his debut novel, The Whitewash, an oral history of the fictional first spy thriller with an Asian male lead. And it was a success: It was shortlisted at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards and won best audiobook at the Australian Book Industry Awards. "It's a very long and sometimes torturous road to publication," Lu says. "Sometimes the book that you think will be the debut book ends up not being that." The success of The Whitewash led Lu to dust off Ghost Cities. Accepting the Miles Franklin at an event in Sydney on Thursday, Lu recalled how he would print out every rejection letter and stick it to a glass window between his office and bedroom, where his newborn baby lay sleeping. "This book, and its difficult journey into being, taught me how to be a man," he says. "Because I finally understood in that moment how to make sense of my failures. "One must accept failure, embrace failure, make a friend of it. We are fools for art. But I am glad to have been a fool." Ghost Cities is the story of Xiang Lu, a translator living in Sydney, who is fired from the Chinese consulate when his employers realise he doesn't actually speak Mandarin. His deception soon goes viral on Chinese social media, with Xiang dubbed #BadChinese. That's when he meets a Chinese auteur filmmaker, Baby Bao, and his translator, Yuan. The mischievous director invites the now infamous Xiang to Port Man Tou, a ghost city turned into a film set, where he plans to make a movie about a villainous ancient Chinese emperor — whose story is also told through fables in the novel. Xiang and Yuan's romantic relationship quickly develops in Port Man Tou, against a backdrop of round-the-clock filmmaking, or surveillance, with the pair talking about their ideas about art, myth, history and identity. "It's not only a romantic love story," Lu says. "It's also a love letter to literature. "It's a love letter to storytelling and storytellers. It's a love letter to the two cultures that I embrace." The Miles Franklin award judges described Ghost Cities as a "grand farce and a haunting meditation of diaspora". "Shimmering with satire and wisdom, and with an absurdist bravura, Ghost Cities is a genuine landmark in Australian literature." Speaking on ABC Radio National's The Book Show in 2024, Lu recalled wanting to fit in when he was growing up. Now he tells his two children it's a gift to be from two different cultures. "A book like The Whitewash and a book like Ghost Cities, these books are not possible to have been written by anyone but someone between two cultures," he says. Since the book's release last year, Lu — who, like his narrator, doesn't speak Mandarin — has been approached by readers from migrant backgrounds who relate to the idea of #BadChinese. "We've all been shamed by our family members and joked at by uncles and aunts, who've said: 'You can't speak the language, so you're not a good Chinese or [other] ethnicity,'" Lu told The Book Show this month. "I certainly feel that way. But there's another part of me that thinks there are other ways to be good advocates for your culture as well. "And I hope this book is one." Years before he wrote Ghost Cities, Lu and his wife Yuan visited an abandoned theme park on the outskirts of Beijing. He had wanted to see one of China's notorious ghost cities — empty cities, complete with skyscrapers, built in the rural countryside but never populated. "The thing that fascinates me the most about these ghost cities is that they're these sort of modern ruins," Lu says. "We often think of ruins as being something from the ancient world. But these are completely new." The couple didn't have time to make it to a ghost city, so a trip to the theme park was the next best thing. "We didn't see any of the ticket operators, we didn't see anyone who lived on the land, but we saw evidence of them," Lu says. "We saw these tiny farms; [farmers] were forced into becoming ticket operators, but in the shadows, they were still farming, which I found incredible." It was a spark for Ghost Cities. Another came in the form of postmodern literature, like Joseph Heller's Catch-22, which Lu first read about 20 years ago. He wanted to capture the wry, absurd humour of that book in his novel. Inspired by the character Major Major Major Major, he dubbed the director in Ghost Cities Baby Bao, which in Mandarin sounds like: "Bao Bao Bao". It's what Lu calls a "bilingual pun". Moments such as this offer a levity that can sometimes be missing from Australian literature, Lu says. He's proud to have also been shortlisted for two prizes for humour writing this year. "When I'm sitting down to write, I have to amuse myself in the writing and in the work. Otherwise, at least for me, it's almost not worth sitting down to do it." Bestselling crime writer Hayley Scrivenor described Ghost Cities as an "instant Australian classic". Lu recalls thinking it was wonderful of Scrivenor to have said that, but that he didn't believe her. But winning the Miles Franklin is, for Lu, a "step towards" Scrivenor's description. "This is the same book as it was word-for-word a year ago, before it won the Miles Franklin," Lu says. "But now, having won the Miles Franklin, it's a different book, and that's something I'm still trying to wrap my head around." He finds it especially hard to grasp that he is joining a list of Miles Franklin winners that includes some of his literary idols. "When I think about authors whose works I've revered and really loved and enjoyed, like Melissa Lucashenko and Tara June Winch, my enjoyment of their books has in some ways been part and parcel with my sense of who they are as authors as well," he says. "If you care about literature, then you sometimes care about the literary weight of something, which is afforded when a book wins a big prize or becomes a bestseller." For now, winning the Miles Franklin gives Lu money to buy his parents a car, as well as the time and space to write the next thing. "There's a sense that things might change, but I don't know how, and there's a sense that I might have more opportunities, but again, I don't know how," Lu says. "If there is some relief in the time pressures — certainly monetarily — to give space to write the next thing, then it's a tremendous gift."
