But early on, Clarke makes a point of aiming her readers away from such mechanical, goal-oriented reading. Yet even as her imitators proliferated, she herself returned only briefly to her antic and ornate parallel Regency. The Ladies of Grace Adieu, a collection of stories published in 2006, was politely received by critics but didn’t quite rekindle the fervour of devotees. And, given the long silence that followed, even non-devotees might wonder what to expect of this new novel. Does it announce an author boldly reclaiming her territory, or one emerging from her own shadow? Well, it’s complicated. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. It’s difficult to describe Piranesi to a new reader, as you don’t want to deprive them of the sheer storytelling pleasure of being taken into another world – something Clarke shares with her fantasy influences CS Lewis, Diana Wynne Jones and Neil Gaiman. It’s what made readers fall in love with her 2004 debut, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an epic slice of rambunctious alternate history set in a Regency England tinged with magic. Kois, Dan (10 September 2020). "Susanna Clarke's First Novel in 16 Years Is a Wonder". Slate . Retrieved 30 September 2020.

Our title character, Piranesi, is another strange fellow. He lives in a world where the words for crisps, biscuits and sausage rolls exist — but the items themselves do not, nor does he seem to think this is odd.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. But 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. Piranesi responds defensively. “The word ‘only’ suggests a relationship of inferiority,” he says. “I would argue that the Statue is superior to the thing itself, the Statue being perfect, eternal and not subject to decay.” Vedute di Roma (Hi-res images from "Vedute di Roma", vol. 17 of "Antichita Romanae"; digitized by Leyden university)

Piranesi is a very different book: restrained, austere, written out of the long illness that plagued Clarke after the success of her debut. Its roots are in a labyrinthine short story by Borges and the fantastical prison etchings of the 18th-century artist who gives the book its name, but also in the collective subconscious of dreams. Perhaps that’s why a book so singular and surreal – perhaps, Clarke thought at first, just too peculiar – has connected so deeply with readers. Every Tuesday and Friday, Piranesi meets a man he calls the Other. The meetings never last for more than an hour. Unlike the rags Piranesi is dressed in, the bits of shells and fishbones he's tied in his overgrown hair, the Other keeps a trim beard, wears immaculate, well–cut suits, and his fine shoes shine. Sometimes you get a book that reminds you how to live. Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi can be interpreted in many ways, but so far, in the trudge through the Dead Marshes that is 2021, I’ve found it most helpful to think of it as an instruction manual. Tranter, Kirsten (October 2020). "Prisons of the imagination: Susanna Clarke's surreal second novel". Australian Book Review. No.425. p.31 . Retrieved 11 October 2020. Maclaren, Sarah F. (2005). La magnificenza e il suo doppio. Il pensiero estetico di Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Milan: Mimesis. ISBN 88-8483-248-9Writing became more difficult, and she put aside the planned sequel, returning to a previous work in progress, which would become Piranesi. “I thought, it doesn’t have hundreds of characters and it won’t require a huge amount of research because I don’t know what research I could do for it,” she said last year, comparing her own situation to that of her hero. “I was aware that I was a person cut off from the world, bound in one place by illness. Piranesi considers himself very free, but he’s cut off from the rest of humanity.” Piranesi’s narrative marks him immediately as an innocent, a pure soul. “The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite,” he writes. The extreme earnestness of his language, combined with the bizarre situation he inhabits, leads him to employ expressions (“Great and Secret Knowledge”) whose extreme seriousness is often very funny. He does not remember how he came to be in the House. He thinks that perhaps 15 people have existed in the history of the world, because there are two people living now, himself and the Other, and he has found 13 skeletons throughout the House. He visits the skeletons and tends to them with great care. He believes the Other is his dear friend, but the reader, less noble of character than Clarke’s hero, will spot straight away that the Other is cunning, rude, and manipulative. He seems to hold Piranesi in contempt, to see him as a tool to further his own plans for the House. While his life is stark, it isn’t exactly impoverished. He loves the House. He has studied the Tides, the movement of the Stars, the waning and waxing of the Moon, and each day is an unfolding of experience. He capitalizes words the same way we capitalize proper names in English—it’s a sign of intimacy and regard that goes above objectification. Piranesi names all Birds with the capital because he regards them all as his siblings; the Fish he eats are gifts from the House, the Statues are his companions in the House, the House is Parent, World, Home, God. So too does his abject gratitude for the Other’s occasional gifts. The various items – multivitamins, a sleeping bag, plastic bowls – are as incongruous in this setting as the “shining device” that the Other carries, but it takes more momentous events to disturb Piranesi’s obliviousness. These begin when he finds signs of another visitor to the House. Enthralled, he relates the news to the Other, whose habitual cold indifference gives way to stern warnings: Piranesi must keep away from this other person at all costs; his very sanity could be in danger.