Who Is Siang Lu, Winner of the 2025 Miles Franklin Award for Ghost Cities?

Siang Lu is an acclaimed Australian writer, satirist, and cultural critic who has made literary headlines after winning the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award for his second novel, Ghost Cities. Described by the judges as “a grand farce and a haunting meditation on diaspora,” the novel cements Lu’s place among the most inventive voices in contemporary Australian fiction.

A Writer Known for Sharp Satire

Siang Lu first rose to prominence with his debut novel, The Whitewash, a biting satire of racism in the film industry that garnered critical attention for its unique structure and bold humour. With Ghost Cities, Lu expands his reach, blending absurdist comedy with political allegory and literary allusion, producing a novel that’s as hilarious as it is profound.

Lu’s writing is often compared to literary tricksters like Vladimir Nabokov and Jorge Luis Borges. He shares Nabokov’s love of wordplay, alter-egos, and elaborate fictional structures. His narrative style fuses modern cultural critique with classical literary references.

About Ghost Cities

Ghost Cities is a dual-narrative political satire told through alternating timelines: one set in a near-future dystopian version of Sydney and a fictional ghost city called Port Man Tou; the other in a fable-like ancient Chinese Imperial City ruled by the maniacal Emperor Lu Huang Du.

The novel explores the absurdity and cruelty of unchecked state power. Emperor Lu Huang Du bans chickens, burns libraries, and conscripts citizens as body doubles—all in a desperate effort to escape mortality and craft a glorious legacy. Meanwhile, in the modern timeline, an egotistical film director named Baby Bao attempts to create a 27-hour biopic of the emperor to affirm his delusional self-image.

The two storylines mirror each other in their exploration of narcissism, artistic fraud, and tyranny—blurring the lines between past and present, fiction and history.

Cultural Commentary Through Comedy

While deeply comic, Ghost Cities tackles serious themes: censorship, nationalism, diasporic identity, propaganda, and the fragility of truth. The judges praised its “absurdist bravura” and ability to fuse satire with thoughtful reflection on cultural heritage and political power.

Women play essential but nuanced roles in both storylines, often serving as historians, truth-bearers, or silent witnesses to madness. Lu’s use of intertextual references—from Dante and Milton to Borges and Calvino—adds layers of depth for keen literary readers.

Personal Life and Background

Siang Lu is based in Australia and has ties to the Asian diaspora, a perspective that strongly informs his writing. He is married to Yuan, whose name appears in the novel as one of the few grounded and intelligent characters—a translator and love interest. Lu is also known for his interest in chess, wordplay, and meta-fictional techniques.

Like Nabokov, Lu enjoys embedding versions of himself in his work. In Ghost Cities, the character Xiang Lu—a fake translator who becomes famous for his ignorance of Chinese—plays a satirical double for the author himself.

Legacy and Reception

With Ghost Cities, Siang Lu joins the ranks of past Miles Franklin winners such as Melissa Lucashenko, Peter Carey, and Tim Winton. Critics are already calling it one of the funniest novels ever to win the prize, and possibly one of the most inventive.

Siang Lu, winner of the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award, is a boundary-pushing satirist whose novel Ghost Cities is a daring, hilarious, and haunting critique of tyranny and cultural legacy. With sharp humour and layered storytelling, Lu challenges readers to reflect on the nature of power, truth, and fiction itself.