Piranesi

Reminds us of fictions 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. Its a dream of a novel -- Anthony Doerr * Observer, Books of the Year * Clarkes 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 Britains 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 Piranesis naively observant voice also nods to the narrators of those Enlightenment parables of flawed Reason lost amid marvels and monsters think Defoes Crusoe, Swifts Gulliver, Voltaires Candide * The Arts Desk * Close to perfect ... Full of wonders and an infectious ecstasy ... Clarke has the same skill Flann OBrien 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 clich 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 thats deliciously weird but meticulously constructed to achieve maximum suspense. Susanna Clarke doesnt 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-unpic

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.