The long-awaited return from the author of the multi-million copy bestselling Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Winner of the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction

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.

"I could have lived in the first hundred pages of Piranesi by Susanna Clarke forever. It’s a dream of a novel" - 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