Siang Lu has won the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award for his novel, Ghost Cities – a bold and satirical reimagining of Australian storytelling.
On winning the award, Lu said: “I am honoured beyond belief, and beyond words. I didn’t dare dream of this. It didn’t seem possible. My most heartfelt thanks to Perpetual as trustee for the Miles Franklin Literary Award estate, the Copyright Agency, my publisher Aviva Tuffield and the wonderful team at UQP, and my agent Brendan Fredericks.”
Siang will receive $60,000 in prize money.
When describing this year’s winning novel, the judges said, “Siang Lu’s Ghost Cities is 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.”