Ghost Cities: Siang Lu in-conversation
Wed, 03 Sept
|Better Read Than Dead
Join us with acclaimed author Siang Lu for a talk on Ghost Cities, his Miles Franklin award-winning novel. Siang will be in-conversation.


Time & Location
03 Sept 2025, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Better Read Than Dead, 265 King St, Newtown NSW 2042, Australia
Guests
About The Event
Ghost Cities – 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.
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?
Allegorical and imaginative, Ghost Cities will appeal to readers of Haruki Murakami and Italo Calvino.
Our event space is wheelchair accessible…
Tickets
Event Ticket
$5.00
Event + Book
Includes a ticket and copy of Ghost Cities
$35.00
Event + Both Books
Includes a ticket, The Whitewash and Ghost Cities
$65.00
+$1.63 ticket service fee
Total
$0.00