An award-winning novel from an international rising star—spanning ancient and modern China—in the dazzlingly inventive style of Susanna Clarke, David Mitchell, and Charles Yu.

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?