Piranesi

Reminds us of fiction’s power to take us to another world and expand our understanding of this one * Guardian, Autumn highlights *
I could have lived in the first hundred pages of Piranesi by Susanna Clarke forever. It’s a dream of a novel -- Anthony Doerr * Observer, Books of the Year *
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 * Guardian, Best Fiction of 2020 *
A startling novel of austere magical realism … Clarke affirmed herself as one of Britain’s most singular novelists * Daily Telegraph, Best Novels of 2020 *
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 *
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 *
Brilliantly peculiar … It subverts expectations throughout … Utterly otherworldly * Guardian *
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 * Daily Mail *
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 * i paper *
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 * The Arts Desk *
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 * Sunday Times *
A dazzling fable about loneliness, imagination and memory * Spectator *
Beautiful and bewitchingly strange * Mail on Sunday *
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. -- Rowan Williams * New Statesman *
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
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 * Sunday Express *
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 * NPR *
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.” * Wired *
Utterly brain-mangling … A creepy, expertly managed crime story * Metro *
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 * The Times *
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? * New York Magazine *
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 * Wall Street Journal *
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 * Boston Globe *
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 * Buzzfeed *
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 * Observer *
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 -- DAVID MITCHELL
A wonder * Slate.com *
Susanna Clarke has fashioned her own myth anew and enlarged the world again * New Republic *
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 -- ERIN MORGENSTERN
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 * Tor.com *
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 * SFX Magazine *
Fifteen years on from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Clarke’s second novel finally sees the light * Sunday Times, What to watch out for next year 2020 *
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 * Waterstones.com *
Here is Clarke’s talent in full flower; Piranesi is the most purely enjoyable novel I’ve read in a long while * Literary Review *
A magical house with labyrinthine halls and tides that thunder up staircases * The Times, Autumn highlights *
Delightful, discombobulating … Piranesi is detective of his own existence ... Gripping * Psychologies *
It’s 16 years since Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell – now Clarke is back with a new otherworldly fantasy * Guardian, 2020 in books: a literary calendar *
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 * Daily Express *
The long-awaited new book from the author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell * Observer *
Susannah Clarke’s much-anticipated follow-up finally arrives * SFX Magazine *
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 * Daily Mirror *
An otherworldly study of solitude, celebrating everyday consolations and the comfort of nature … Inventive, immersive and hard to pin down -- Lisa Allardice * Guardian *
Her extraordinary novel pirouettes between CS Lewisesque fantasy and sci-fi thriller * The i *
Structured like a thriller and burrows into the subconscious, throwing out puzzles long after the final page * The Times, The Best Paperbacks of 2021 *
What begins as “fantasy” becomes, in a series of hints and echoes and rug-pulling revelations, a detective story, a satire and a witty take on male egoism. Daring and dazzling stuff -- Stuart Maconie * New Statesman, Books of the year *
I could have lived in the first hundred pages of Piranesi by Susanna Clarke for ever. It’s a dream of a novel * Observer, The best books of 2021 *