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Ghost Cities
Ghost Cities | Siang Lu
2 posts | 2 read | 2 to read
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.
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Rissreadswithcats
Ghost Cities | Siang Lu
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I don‘t think I gave this book the attention it deserves, because I had so much going on in my life.
There were 2 timelines in this book. One was set in Ancient China mostly involving an Emperor and the other was set in present day regarding Xiang who loses his job at the Chinese Consulate because he can‘t actually speak Mandarin (google translate will only get you so far!) 🤣
He then goes to work in a ghost city, which is a 24/7 film set. ⬇️

Rissreadswithcats He is manipulated by the cities director Baby Bao, who makes him into a meme #BadChinese. I enjoyed the modern half of the story more than the story set in the past. This timeline was amusing and had a lot to say about the saturation of the media in our world today. #Ozfiction 3.5 ⭐️ (edited) 3d
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keepingupwiththepenguins
Ghost Cities | Siang Lu
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Ghost Cities gets a little weird – strong Italo Calvino vibes, for readers who like that sort of thing. I found myself most drawn to the Port Man Tou story, where the city-cum-film-set is revealed to be a contemporary panopticon that blurs the line between life and art. Even as the story grows increasingly surreal and dystopian, the tone remains sharp and wry. Full review: https://keepingupwiththepenguins.com/ghost-cities-siang-lu/