Piranesi
by Susanna Clarke and Chiwetel Ejiofor (narrator)
🏆 Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021
Recommendations from our site
“Everyone loves Piranesi… It’s the story of a man who has no memories and no sense of time. He’s been named Piranesi by the only other occupant of the enormous palatial space that he finds himself in, which doesn’t really have the constraints of a physical place…This novel does that masterful, difficult thing of hooking you straight away, at first with nothing but pure intrigue, and then with this momentum of yearning and wonder and anguish all the way through. It’s a small, elegant mystery. There’s something extremely punk rock about releasing a tiny book. Piranesi is not technically a novella, but you could read it in a day or two. I just love that.” Read more...
Arianna Reiche, Novelist
“I really think of Piranesi as a fantasy book because it’s about this man who’s living in a maze. He is talking to statues and interacting with them and he has someone that comes and visits him once or twice a week. He’s also on a journey of self-discovery…It just really makes you sit and listen. It’s a seven-hour book, and it was hard for me to walk away from it, because I was trying to figure out what was going on, to peel back the layers of the onion, and work out the maze. It really sucked me in.” Read more...
The Best Audiobooks: the 2021 Audie Awards
Michele Cobb, Publisher
“Set in a fantastical other world, which runs parallel to our own, we find its protagonist wandering an infinite series of ruined halls through which wind rushes, clouds condense and seawater washes. Truly rather wondrous, and the product of a brilliant mind.” Read more...
Cal Flyn, Five Books Editor
