Piranesi is the Beloved Child of the House, which is not a house at all but an endless maze of classical halls, flooded with fearsome ocean and filled with silver clouds. Besides the fish, the birds, and Piranesi, there is only The Other. Half-mystery and half-fantasy, full of magic and suspense, Piranesi transcends both genres to become a moving meditation on timeless themes: What is ignorance? What is knowledge? What kind of knowledge is worth gaining, and at what cost? Piranesi is a lovable guide, his purity and innocence at times heart-rending - a model of what human goodness could be.
— Maddie
Imagine you find yourself living in a mansion full of thousands of marble statues, lining hundreds of rooms, which take days to reach. Piranesi has an extensive knowledge of almost everything in this house, from the changing tides of the ocean on the floor below, to the migration of the birds in the sky that is the floor above. The one thing he doesn’t know is why he is there, and the only other resident is oddly quiet about it... One of my favorite books in recent years, I loved trying to piece together the mysteries of the marble halls on my journey alongside Piranesi.
— Josh
“It was more than 15 years ago that Susanna Clarke built a wing on the edifice of fantasy fiction unlike any seen before in the form of a debut novel called Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. After so long, I’d be grateful for any new work from her, but I’m unspeakably glad that she’s again constructed something entirely new. Piranesi has a smaller footprint than her previous novel, but makes more efficient use of space, cramming an entire unsettling universe into a book far bigger on the inside than it is out.”
— James Crossley, Madison Books, Seattle, WA
“This beguiling story proves that a slim novel can be epic in scope, and that complex is not the same as abtruse. The mystery surrounding Piranesi and the House he lives in immediately draws one in. An engaging and thought-provoking novel.”
— Keith Glaeske, East City Bookshop, Washington, DC
Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. Piranesi is not afraid; he lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house - a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. As Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.