Reading Order
Piranesi Reading Order
Susanna Clarke's Piranesi (2020) is her second novel — a puzzle-box mystery set in a vast House of infinite halls, statues, and tidal seas, whose only known inhabitant is Piranesi, who keeps meticulous journals of the tides and the statues and the movements of the Other. The House is a different kind of place from anything in conventional fantasy, and the novel is primarily a mystery about what the House is and how Piranesi came to be in it. It is shorter and stranger than Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell — approximately 250 pages — and can be read and finished in an afternoon. It won the Women's Prize for Fiction (2021).
Where to start
Piranesi
Complete Piranesi Book List
- 1Buy
Piranesi
Susanna Clarke·2020·The complete standalone novel — approximately 250 pages, best read in one or two sittings to preserve the mystery. The House's nature should not be researched or spoiled before reading. - 2Buy
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Susanna Clarke·2004·The companion full-length novel — Clarke's first and most ambitious work, the alternate-history Napoleonic England fantasy, an entirely different register but by the same sensibility that created the House in Piranesi. - 3Buy
The Ladies of Grace Adieu
Susanna Clarke·2006·The companion story collection — eight stories in the world of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Clarke's other fiction to date.
Piranesi — Frequently Asked Questions
Is Piranesi connected to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell?
Piranesi and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell are set in the same fictional universe — Clarke has confirmed that the House in Piranesi is the same kind of other-place as the Faerie world that appears in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and that the two novels are set in the same cosmology. However, no characters overlap and Piranesi is entirely readable and enjoyable without any knowledge of Jonathan Strange. Reading Jonathan Strange first will give some additional resonance to certain elements of Piranesi, but it is not required, and many readers encounter Piranesi first.
What is the House in Piranesi?
The House is a vast architectural space — infinite halls lined with statues, tidal seas that flood the lower halls, clouds that drift through the upper halls — that exists outside ordinary reality. Its exact nature and origin is one of the central mysteries of the novel, and it is best not to look it up before reading. Clarke draws on the eighteenth-century Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), famous for his Carceri d'Invenzione — imaginary prisons, architectural fantasies of impossible staircases and vaults — as the visual and conceptual source for her House. The name 'Piranesi' given to the protagonist is itself a clue.
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