Six Degrees of Separation ~ Ghost Cities

Siang Lu
"Ghost Cities" - 2024
 
#6Degrees of Separation:
from Ghost Cities (Goodreads) to Syria's Secret Library 

#6Degrees is a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. I love the idea. Thank you, Kate. See more about this challenge, its history, further books and how I found this here.

The starter book this month is "Ghost Cities" by Siang Lu. Again, I have not read the starter book. This is the description of the novel:

"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. 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 where a horny mountain gains sentience? Where a chess-playing automaton hides a deadly secret? Or 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 will appeal to readers of Haruki Murakami and Italo Calvino."

Other than many of the books from this challenge, I might quite like this one. But there is no way I can get it within a month for a reasonable price.

The name or title doesn't do much for me, either. I only have two books with the word Ghost in the title. Of course, there would have been a few with City in it. But they didn't inspire me to go further, either. And I have only read one other book that was awarded the Miles Franklin Award, Oscar and Lucinda. However, there are a few on my wishlist.

In the end, I went with the title. I have read another book that takes place in China and is all about languages, and that's how I started:

Xu, Ruiyan "The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai" - 2010
After an accident, a man loses part of his brain and can only speak the language he grew up with but does not reign that of his wife and child. A problem that is rare but can happen.

Sanders, Ella Frances "Lost in Translation. An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World" - 2014
A linguaphile is a person who loves language and words. They can be interested in many different things such as learning to speak several different languages or simply nerding out about words in general. The author has put together many interesting words and illustrated them with her beautiful drawings. A great book for any language nerd.

Croker, Charlie "Løst in Tränšlatioπ. Misadventures in English Abroad" - 2006
This is one of those humorous books about language and how it can be understood and expressed quite differently in different countries. This edition collects all those funny little signs and descriptions we find all over the world - not without telling us that we shouldn’t judge-

Fox, Kate "Watching the English: the hidden rules of English behaviour" - 2004
An anthropology about a nation dear to my heart - the English. This book is quite funny at times and I am sure all the English people will love it and just nod their heads all the time - well, most of the others will do the same. 

Piercy, Joseph "The Story of English: How an Obscure Dialect became the World's Most-Spoken Language" - 2012
This book reads like a novel about some people who inhabited a small island, were invaded and then started to invade others, as well. 

Thomson, Mike "Syria's Secret Library: The true story of how a besieged Syrian town found hope" - 2018
In the midst of one of the worst civil wars in history, some young men build a library in order to feed their souls and learn for the future "when all this is over". They are an inspiration to us all.

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So, what does the last book have to do with the starter one? Languages and Books. What better topic for a book blog.

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