Piranesi
The long-awaited return from the author of the multi-million copy bestselling Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
The Beautiful Orderliness of the House is what gives us Life.
Piranesi has always lived in the House; or, for as long as he can remember.
Day after day, Piranesi records in his notebooks with precision and carefulness the House's endless halls, their great and strange statues, the ebb and flow of the tides within its walls. He speaks to the birds; and brings tributes of food and waterlilies to the House's Dead. Once in a while, he sees his friend the Other. But mostly, he is alone.
Then messages begin to appear, scratched out in chalk and spelled out in pebbles. A new person has come to the House, and there is something they are trying to tell Piranesi.
But another story is unfolding, within the pages of Piranesi's own journal. A story written in his own hand, that he cannot remember writing; a story of a group of strangers, in an unfamiliar world.
The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.
Susanna Clarke
Susanna Clarke (born 1959) is a British author best known for her debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), an alternate history fantasy. The novel has been published in more than 30 countries. It was the Book Sense Book of the Year, Time Magazine’s #1 Book of the Year, and the winner of the Hugo Award, the Locus Award, and the World Fantasy Award.
At 1,000 pages long, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is an epic nineteenth-century tale ”combining the extraordinary imaginative skills of Philip Pullman with the witty, gently satirical prose style of Jane Austen”. It portrays the lives of the last two practising magicians in England. In the edges of darkness lurks the shadowy figure of the Raven King, a human child taken by fairies in ancient times, who has become the most legendary magician of all.
Susanna Clarke lives in Cambridge.
