Piranesi

Author(s): Susanna Clarke

Novel | Dystopia, Science Fiction and Fantasy

Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

Review: 
Reminds us of fiction's power to take us to another world and expand our understanding of this one * Guardian*
It has a daring and a grace that are quietly, transportingly spectacular. If you were looking for a book that distils the concept of wonder, this is the one: it feels like a work of pure generosity -- KATHERINE RUNDELL * GUARDIAN, *
It's always great to have some fiction to heartily recommend, and while there's been stiff competition this year, Piranesi by Susanna Clarke has won out in the end. A masterful work of weird fiction, it's a novel that grips, perplexes and moves you, usually all at once! * Observer, The Best Books of 2020 *
The fiction, nonfiction and poetry that deepened our understanding, ignited our curiosity and helped us escape ... For fantasy readers often eager to get lost in mystical worlds and escape the complications of real life, Piranesi's predicament deeply resonates * Time, Books of the Year *
The long-anticipated second novel from the author of 2004's best-seller Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is a philosophical fantasy. Piranesi (the name is one of several allusions to the 18th century) spends his days interpreting coded messages left around a labyrinthine villa filled with seabirds and symbolic statues * Financial Times, Books of the Year *
Susanna Clarke's new novel is a beguiling study of isolation and exile ... To say more would be to ruin one of the year's more unusual reading experiences * i paper, Books of the Year 2020 *
This tale of weird enchanted halls is close to perfect * The Times, Books of the Year *
Purely joyful reading ... a delight - as if Borges wrote a novel with a beginning, middle and satisfying end -- Naomi Alderman * Spectator, Books of the Year *
My absolute favourite book of the year by miles ... it took root in me -- Jenny Colgan * Spectator, Books of the Year *
Like Hilary Mantel, Clarke made the very notion of genre seem quaint ... Piranesi is a tenebrous study in solitude ... A remarkable feat, not just of craft but of reinvention * Guardian *
Susanna Clarke's first novel since 2004's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was more than worth the sixteen-year wait. Full of the magic and mayhem you might expect, Piranesi introduces a labyrinth to savour * NetGalley UK's Top Ten Books of 2020 *
Susanna Clarke's long-awaited Piranesi is utterly compelling - bewildering, intense, moving, shocking, combining a haunting fantasy with sharp insights about a culture of domination, hierarchy and rivalry and about how the imagination can survive in such a world -- Rowan Williams * New Statesman Books of the Year *
Like a thriller ... Compelling ... A fever dream - disorientating, engrossing, persistently strange ... It burrows into the subconscious, throwing out puzzles long after the final page ... Brilliantly singular * Sunday Times *
Exhilarating and hallucinatory, a mystery told backwards and inside-out. How she does it I've no idea; it's as though most minds are cameras, but Clarke's is a kaleidoscope -- Melissa Harrison * New Statesman, Books of the Year *
Brilliantly peculiar ... It subverts expectations throughout ... Utterly otherworldly * Guardian *
A novel to revisit - a house you can open again, with statues touched by quiet thoughts and strange tides ... To read Piranesi is to be the labyrinth and the traveller in the labyrinth, which is poetry and prose * Observer *
Piranesi astonished me. It is a miraculous and luminous feat of storytelling, at once a gripping mystery, an adventure through a brilliant new fantasy world, and a deep meditation on the human condition: feeling lost, and being found. I already want to be back in its haunting and beautiful halls! -- MADELINE MILLER


Author Biography: Susanna Clarke's debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was first published in more than 34 countries and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian First Book Award. It won British Book Awards Newcomer of the Year, the Hugo Award and the World Fantasy Award in 2005. The Ladies of Grace Adieu, a collection of short stories, some set in the world of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, was published by Bloomsbury in 2006. Piranesi was a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, and shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year Award, the Hugo Award and the Women's Prize for Fiction. Susanna Clarke lives in Derbyshire.

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Product Information

   

Winner - Women's Prize for Fiction 2021

   

General Fields

  • : 9781526622426
  • : Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
  • : Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
  • : 0.444
  • : February 2020
  • : ---length:- '8.504'width:- '6.024'units:- Inches
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Susanna Clarke
  • : hardback
  • : 2009
  • : English
  • : 823.92
  • : 272
  • : FM