Ghost Cities by Siang Lu (University of Queensland Press) has won the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award, honoring "the novel of the highest literary merit which presents Australian life in any of its phases." Lu receives A$60,000 (about US$39,700).
Judges called Ghost Cities "at once a grand farce and a haunting meditation on diaspora. Sitting within a tradition in Australian writing that explores failed expatriation and cultural fraud, Lu's novel is also something strikingly new. In Ghost Cities, the Sino-Australian imaginary appears as a labyrinthine film-set, where it is never quite clear who is performing and who is directing. Shimmering with satire and wisdom, and with an absurdist bravura, Ghost Cities is a genuine landmark in Australian literature."