Description
Ghost Cities — inspired by the vacant, uninhabited megacities of China — follows multiple narratives. One thread follows a young man named Xiang, who 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 to a place where a horny mountain gains sentience? Where a chess-playing automaton hides a deadly secret? Or to 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 intertwines these tales into a dreamlike, allegorical mosaic.
Perfect for fans of Haruki Murakami and Italo Calvino.