Product DescriptionA SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERA NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERWINNER OF THE KITSCHIES RED TENTACLE AWARDThe spectacular new novel from the bestselling author of JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL, 'one of our greatest living authors' New York MagazinePiranesi 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' TelegraphReviewReminds us of fiction's power to take us to another world and expand our understanding of this one ?Guardian, Autumn highlightsClarke'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 2020A startling novel of austere magical realism . Clarke affirmed herself as one of Britain's most singular novelists ?Daily Telegraph, Best Novels of 2020Like 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 ?GuardianLike 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 TimesBrilliantly peculiar . It subverts expectations throughout . Utterly otherworldly ?GuardianA 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 MailThe 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 paperHer 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 DeskClose to perfect ... Full of wonders and an infectious ecstasy ... Clarke has the same skill Flann O'Brien poured intoThe Third Policeman for making insane worlds feel as solid as our own ?Sunday TimesA dazzling fable about loneliness, imagination and memory ?SpectatorBeautiful and bewitchingly strange ?Mail on SundayThis 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 descri