Piranesi

Winner of the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction A SUNDAY TIMES & NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The spectacular new novel from the bestselling author of JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL, ‘one of our greatest living authors’ NEW YORK MAGAZINE

Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has. In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides that thunder up staircases, the clouds that move in slow procession through the upper halls. On Tuesdays and Fridays Piranesi sees his friend, the Other. At other times he brings tributes of food to the Dead. But mostly, he is alone. Messages begin to appear, scratched out in chalk on the pavements. There is someone new in the House. But who are they and what do they want? Are they a friend or do they bring destruction and madness as the Other claims? Lost texts must be found; secrets must be uncovered. The world that Piranesi thought he knew is becoming strange and dangerous. The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite. 'What a world Susanna Clarke conjures into being … Piranesi is an exquisite puzzle-box' DAVID MITCHELL ‘It subverts expectations throughout … Utterly otherworldly’ GUARDIAN 'Piranesi astonished me. It is a miraculous and luminous feat of storytelling' MADELINE MILLER ‘Brilliantly singular’ SUNDAY TIMES'A gorgeous, spellbinding mystery … This book is a treasure, washed up upon a forgotten shore, waiting to be discovered' ERIN MORGENSTERN ‘Head-spinning … Fully imagined and richly evoked’ TELEGRAPH

Reminds us of fiction’s power to take us to another world and expand our understanding of this one, I could have lived in the first hundred pages of Piranesi by Susanna Clarke forever. It’s a dream of a novel, Clarke’s fantastical parable of solitude, imagination, ambition and contentment is a spectacular piece of fiction, and the perfect reading accompaniment to a year like no other, A startling novel of austere magical realism … Clarke affirmed herself as one of Britain’s most singular novelists, 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

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 and the Women's Prize for Fiction. She lives in Derbyshire.

Book Partnerships

For the Fans