Piranesi
WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE 2021
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4.4 • 10 Ratings
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- €9.99
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- €9.99
Publisher Description
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)
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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.
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'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
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
More than a decade after her game-changing debut, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke invites us into her unbridled imagination once again. Heady and seductive, Piranesi explores a house of endless rooms where the impossible becomes a matter of routine. Yet the book is surprisingly narrow in its focus, centred primarily on two scholarly characters who aren’t quite what they seem. Balancing the elemental and the intellectual, Clarke continues to broaden the horizons of fantasy literature. Fans of David Mitchell and Jorge Luis Borges will especially enjoy this sophisticated meditation on humanity, magic and memory.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Clarke wraps a twisty mystery inside a metaphysical fantasy in her extraordinary new novel, her first since 2004's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. The story unfolds as journal entries written by the eponymous narrator, who, along with an enigmatic master known as the Other (and 13 skeletons whom Piranesi regards as persons) inhabits the House, a vast, labyrinthine structure of statue-adorned halls and vestibules. So immense is the House that its many parts support their own internal climates, all of which Piranesi vividly describes ("I squeezed myself into the Woman's Niche and waited until I heard the Tides roaring in the Lower Halls and felt the Walls vibrating with the force of what was about to happen"). Meanwhile, the Other is pursuing the "Great and Secret Knowledge" of the ancients. After the Other worriedly asks Piranesi if he's seen in the house a person they refer to as 16, Piranesi's curiosity is piqued, and all the more so after the Other instructs him to hide. In their discussions about 16, it becomes increasingly clear the Other is gaslighting Piranesi about his memory, their relationship, and the reality they share. With great subtlety, Clarke gradually elaborates an explanatory backstory to her tale's events and reveals sinister occult machinations that build to a crescendo of genuine horror. This superbly told tale is sure to be recognized as one of the year's most inventive novels.
