Piranesi
- Author Susanna Clarke
- Narrator Chiwetel Ejiofor
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date 15 September 2020
- Run Time 6 hours and 59 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Contemporary fantasy, Dark fantasy, Magical realism, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Interior life, Speculative fiction.
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What to expect
Bloomsbury presents Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, read by Chiwetel Ejiofor.
WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE 2021
WINNER OF THE KITSCHIES' 2021
SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA NOVEL OF THE YEAR AWARD
A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE THE TIMES, GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, DAILY TELEGRAPH, FINANCIAL TIMES, i PAPER, NEW STATESMAN, SPECTATOR, TIME MAGAZINE, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, BBC CULTURE, NETGALLEY AND THE CHURCH TIMES
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
WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE 2021
WINNER OF THE KITSCHIES' 2021
SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA NOVEL OF THE YEAR AWARD
A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE THE TIMES, GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, DAILY TELEGRAPH, FINANCIAL TIMES, i PAPER, NEW STATESMAN, SPECTATOR, TIME MAGAZINE, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, BBC CULTURE, NETGALLEY AND THE CHURCH TIMES
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
Critics Review
Reminds us of fiction’s power to take us to another world and expand our understanding of this one
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
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!
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
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
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
This tale of weird enchanted halls is close to perfect
A warm book about losing and finding oneself; about what humanity could have lost in the process of becoming rational
Purely joyful reading … a delight - as if Borges wrote a novel with a beginning, middle and satisfying end
My absolute favourite book of the year by miles ... it took root in me
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 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
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
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
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
Brilliantly peculiar … It subverts expectations throughout … Utterly otherworldly
The publication of Susanna Clarke's Piranesi confirms her status as one of the greatest and most interesting writers of fantasy in the past hundred years or more
A gently comic, thoroughly beguiling read … The ‘House’ - its upper rooms lost in clouds, its lower chambers drowned by the sea - will haunt my dreams
The most curious confection … Blending elements of mythology and fantasy, with nods along the way to CS Lewis and Tolkien … Genuinely moving climax that throws open the doors of the halls in more ways than one
Her prowess as a stylist is undiminished … Piranesi’s naively observant voice also nods to the narrators of those Enlightenment parables of flawed Reason lost amid marvels and monsters – think Defoe’s Crusoe, Swift’s Gulliver, Voltaire’s Candide
Close to perfect ... Full of wonders and an infectious ecstasy ... Clarke has the same skill Flann O’Brien poured into The Third Policeman for making insane worlds feel as solid as our own
A dazzling fable about loneliness, imagination and memory
Beautiful and bewitchingly strange
This is a novel of exceptional beauty ... The cliché that this book is hard to put down is for once true; I can think of few recent books that keep the reader so passionately hungry to know what happens next and to understand the hints and guesses that appear in greater and greater profusion ... There is at the heart of her writing a rare capacity for the immediate: the stripped, wide-eyed descriptive simplicity of someone who, like her Piranesi, has gone through some sort of barrier and brought back news.
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
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!
A book that’s deliciously weird but meticulously constructed to achieve maximum suspense. Susanna Clarke doesn’t just write about magic; she channels it on to the page
Enthralling and transcendent ... Clarke's writing is clear, sharp - she can cleave your heart in a few short words ... The mystery of Piranesi unwinds at a tantalizing yet lightning-like pace - it's hard not to rush ahead, even when each sentence, each revelation makes you want to linger
Plunges deep into those forbidden fortresses from which the un-mad and mortal among us are forever barred ... The only possible conclusion is: Clarke is writing from experience ... With great effort, Clarke has un-unpicked her personality and returned to this world, our Earth, so that the rest of us might know her exquisite burden. Welcome back, Fairy Mistress, if only for a spell! We are grateful to you, oh yes, but we mourn you a little, too—that you must work so hard to be human.”
Utterly brain-mangling … A creepy, expertly managed crime story
Close to perfect ... As a work of fiction, it’s spectacular; an irresistibly unspooling mystery set in a world of original strangeness, revealing a set of ideas that will stay lodged in your head long after you’ve finished reading
Why don’t you trip on the new Susanna Clarke book if you want to get your mind bent but don’t much care for drugs?
A high-quality page-turner - even the most leisurely reader will probably finish it off in a day - but its chief pleasure is immersion in its strange and uncannily attractive setting ... A standout feat
Could Piranesi match the hype? I’m delighted to say it has, with Clarke’s singular wit and imagination still intact in a far more compressed yet still captivating tale you’ll want to delve into again right after you read its sublime last sentence
A short and beautiful novel that reads like a poem ... in its cumulative effect of expressing an emotion and state of being that is inexpressible. It’s a strange and lovely read
In terms of invention and beauty, it’s a fitting heir to Clarke’s first book … Clarke deftly weaves together highbrow and lowbrow so Piranesi as reader is both symbol and story. To read Piranesi is to be the labyrinth and the traveler in the labyrinth, which is poetry and prose … The end of the novel doesn’t exactly provide justice, and closure is only provisional. Piranesi is a gentle man, and a gentle book. It wants to leave doors open for its characters and its readers … Piranesi is a novel to revisit - a house you can open again, with statues touched by quiet thoughts and strange tides
What a world Susanna Clarke conjures into being, what a tick-tock-tick-tock of reveals, what a pure protagonist, what a morally squalid supporting cast, what beauty, tension and restraint, and what a pitch-perfect ending. Piranesi is an exquisite puzzle-box far, far bigger on the inside than it is on the outside
A wonder
Susanna Clarke has fashioned her own myth anew and enlarged the world again
Piranesi is a gorgeous, spellbinding mystery that gently unravels page by page. Precisely the sort of book that I love wordlessly handing to someone so they can have the pleasure of uncovering its secrets for themselves. This book is a treasure, washed up upon a forgotten shore, waiting to be discovered
Okay, now everyone listen. No, I mean it, shut up for a second. We need to talk about Piranesi. I don’t… I really do not know how to talk about this book beyond a very high pitched scream and an emphatic grabbing of your knee
As gloriously imaginative as its predecessor … A novel that could have been written by nobody else … Her prose is crisp, direct and unfussy … It’s a book about the tension between those who want to possess a world and those who delight in it, describe it, honour it. It’s an extraordinary book, well worth the wait
Fifteen years on from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Clarke’s second novel finally sees the light
Susannah Clarke’s monumental masterwork Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was one of the finest works of speculative fiction of the twenty-first century and now, with Piranesi, she once more mines a darkly fantastical vision with a tale of a very singular house and its mysterious inhabitants. Saturated in gothic atmosphere and supernatural lore, Piranesi is simply unmissable
Here is Clarke’s talent in full flower; Piranesi is the most purely enjoyable novel I’ve read in a long while
A magical house with labyrinthine halls and tides that thunder up staircases
Delightful, discombobulating … Piranesi is detective of his own existence ... Gripping
It’s 16 years since Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell – now Clarke is back with a new otherworldly fantasy
Sixteen long years have passed since the publication of the magnificent Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Susanna Clarke returns at last in September with Piranesi … The eerie tale of a man who lives in a flooded house
The long-awaited new book from the author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Susannah Clarke’s much-anticipated follow-up finally arrives
Sixteen years after Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell, Susannah Clarke returns at last with the otherworldly tale of a man who lives in a flooded house
I wish I could read this again for the first time. Its atmosphere of beautiful, sad loneliness is the perfect lockdown companion. There are so many things to note about the book, but here is just one: Piranesi looks with loving attention at the world in which he finds himself, caring for everything that he encounters, and receiving everything as a loving gift. Other forces, however, see it very differently. The book is deeply satisfying, with a depth of sadness – or is it joy?
PRAISE FOR JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR NORRELL: Unquestionably the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years. It’s funny, moving, scary, otherworldly, practical and magical ... Closing Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell after 800 pages my only regret was that it wasn’t twice the length
This is, in both the precise and the colloquial sense, a fabulous book ... a highly original and compelling work
To be honest, my topic for a gathering, my page-turner, my mind-improver, my talking point and my train-reading are all one and the same book: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell…I am literally unable to put it down
Full of spells, bad weather, statues that talk, haunted ballrooms and sinister gentlemen with thistledown hair ... be enchanted!
The language of the book is such a pleasure you’d probably want to go and read it anyway
A literary event
A sublime exploration of loss, isolation, and the power of the imagination
Infinitely clever ... None of Clarke’s enchantment has worn off - it’s evolved ... to abide in these pages is to find oneself happily detained in awe
Wondrous and moving ... Empathy opens new horizons in Susanna Clarke’s glorious new novel about occultists, lost ages, and the power of belief
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