The Institute for Australian and Asian Arts and Culture (IAC) at Western Sydney University (WSU) is thrilled to invite you to
Writers in Conversation #4, featuring Siang Lu, winner of the 2025 Miles Franklin Award for his groundbreaking, genre-blending novel
Ghost Cities. This event is held in partnership with the WSU’s Writing and Society Research Centre.
Siang Lu, born in Malaysia and raised in Brisbane, completed the manuscript of
Ghost Cities in 2015. It took nearly a decade and more than 200 rejections from publishers before the book was finally published in 2024. It then picked up the most prestigious literary award in Australia. The book was hailed by the Miles Franklin judges:
“Shimmering with satire and wisdom, and with an absurdist bravura, Ghost Cities is a genuine landmark in Australian literature.” This dramatic turn of events could be straight out of Siang Lu’s own writing—surprising, superbly satirical, wildly imaginative
and deeply allegorical.
Ghost Cities has been praised for its sharp humour and incisive critique of art, capitalism, cultural identity, and absurdities of modern life. Described as ambitious, the novel brims with absurdist humour, incisive cultural commentary and biting satire.
The novel interlaces a dual narrative between mythical and modern China, drawing inspiration from the country’s hauntingly vacant megacities and from John Milton’s
Paradise Lost. Richie Black notes, “In Ghost Cities, we see meaning-making—stories, myths, translations—used to build or subvert power across the centuries.” The book’s intricate, layered style is inventive, daring, and thrilling, engaging the
reader’s mind and heart. Siang Lu’s storytelling is both beguiling and deeply rewarding.
While Siang Lu was collecting rejection slips for Ghost Cities, he wrote and published his other brilliant book,
The Whitewash (2022), a scathing, hilarious satire of Asian misrepresentation in the film industry and “an ambitious work that’s attempting a story you rarely find in Australian fiction" (Jackie Tang). The book blends oral history and mockumentary, masterfully
blurring fiction and fact, and takes readers on a wild ride. Siang Lu’s satirical exploration of the whitewashing of Asian representation on the big screen and beyond is razor-sharp. His offhand humour and piercing insight both surprise and strike straight
at the core, as these quotes from The Whitewash show:
Our grandparents grew up with the Yellow Peril. Our parents grew up with yellow discomfort. Our generation grew up with yellow invisibility.
The real measure of success, the proof that Asians have been fully accepted in Western society, will be when they start naming natural disasters after us: Hurricane Shuang.
In these two books, Siang Lu proves himself a master of satire, sparing no one or nothing from his eagle-eyed observations and piercing wit. With acerbic humour and ruthless precision, he skewers the absurdities of life. Most refreshingly, he writes unapologetically—and
effortlessly—from and for his bicultural perspective.
This conversation with Siang Lu is not to be missed.
