The winner of the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award, worth AUD60,000, was announced this evening by Australian journalist Fran Kelly during her program, The Radio National Hour. And the winner is:

Siang Lu’s Ghost cities

Kelly described the novel as being about an “epic conquest of ancient empires and tyrannical leaders”, and also about “what is truth and power”. Also, she said, “it makes you laugh sometimes”. Ghost cities was inspired by the migrant experience, and living in a diaspora. Consequently, it “grapples with the tensions of being Chinese but not Chinese enough”. She and Lu talked a little about his experience of living in such a diaspora.

The judges described the book as “at once a grand farce and a haunting meditation of diaspora”. Lu was happy with the “grand farce” description.

Publisher UQP starts its page on the novel with this description:

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.

Steinberg – see my link below – concludes his short discussion of the novel, with:

Ghost Cities both embraces and defies its emperor’s directive to abandon “the pursuit of beauty” for art that favours “furrowed brows and scholar-like interpretation”. In its zany intertextuality, it displays a level of intellectual ambition rarely found in recent fiction.

Kelly discussed the novel with Lu, teasing out many of the ideas raised in the above descriptions, and in a review of the novel by Tara June Winch (which had, apparently, made Lu cry!) I didn’t capture it all for my post, but Australians, at least, will be able to listen to this interview on the program’s podcast. However, I did like Lu’s final comment regarding current concerns about the impact of AI on writing (and on the arts in general). He said that “if authors imbue their life and soul into their work, that’s the lodestar, and is something AI can’t replicate”. I love his confidence – and surely he’s right (for a while at least)?

To recap, the shortlist

• Brian Castro, Chinese postman (Giramondo) (on my reading group’s 2025 schedule) (Lisa’s review): Castro has been shortlisted for the MF before
• Michelle de Kretser, Theory & practice (Text Publishing) (my review): de Kretser has wont MF twice before, and this book won this year’s Stella Prize
• Winnie Dunn, Dirt poor islanders (Hachette Australia) (review coming next week): debut novel by a Tongan-Australian writer
• Julie Janson, Compassion (Magabala Books): sequel to Benevolence, which I reviewed; Janson’s author’s first shortlisting for the MF
• Siang Lu, Ghost cities (UQP): Lu’s first shortlisting for the MF – and now on my TBR!
• Fiona McFarlane, Highway 13 (Allen and Unwin) (kimbofo’s review): McFarlane has been shortlisted before, but for a novel; this book straddles the short story/novel divide. I’m keen to read it.

For a succinct discussion of the shortlist, you could check out the one posted at The Conversation, by Western Australian postdoctoral fellow, Joseph Steinberg. But there are others.

To recap, winners since 2020

To put this in context, I thought it would be interesting to share the winners, since 2020:

• 2020: Tara June Winch, The yield (PRH, my review)
• 2021: Amanda Lohrey, The labyrinth (Text Publishing, on my TBR, kimbofo’s review)
• 2022: Jennifer Down, Bodies of light (Text Publishing, Rose’s review)
• 2023: Shankari Chandran, Chai time at Cinnamon Gardens (Ultimo Press, my review)
• 2024: Alexis Wright, Praiseworthy (Giramondo, Bill’s second post with a link to his first)

All women writers, and encompassing diverse backgrounds. Now, for the first time since 2016 (AS Patrić’s, Black rock white city – my review), we have another book by a male writer. Interestingly, like that 2016 winner, it’s a book inspired by migration.

This year’s judging panel comprised Richard Neville (Mitchell Librarian, the State Library of NSW and Chair), Associate Professor Jumana Bayeh (literary scholar), Dr Mridula Nath Chakraborty (literary scholar and translator), Professor Tony Hughes-d’Aeth (literary scholar and author) and Professor Hsu-Ming Teo (author – of Love and vertigo, among other books – and literary scholar).

A big congratulations to Siang Lu. I have been toying with buying this book, particularly because I’d heard it has a humorous element. After all, it was listed for the Russell Prize for Humour Writing, and the VPLA John Clarke Humour Award (see my post on Humour Writing prizes). A big plus for me.

Thoughts anyone?