Piranese

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All images from that 29 volumes complete works edition (English interface with Italian and French text; from General Library, University of Tokyo) Piranesi pretty much sums up what the Women’s fiction prize is all about’ … Susanna Clarke. Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian

Two years later, Clarke published The Ladies of Grace Adieu, a short-story collection set mostly in the same alternate-Napoleonic world as Jonathan Strange. Then she went quiet. Years passed; she published nothing. Among her fans, word gradually spread that she had health problems, that it was unlikely she’d ever write again. Then one day, almost without warning, the complete manuscript of Piranesi appeared in her agent’s inbox. What if a new manuscript from a long-silent writer suddenly appeared, and the manuscript turned out to be one long puzzle?

The spectacular new novel from the bestselling author of JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL, 'one of our greatest living authors' New York Magazine The Other sees a very different world. He tells Piranesi in a fit of annoyance, "But there isn't anything powerful. There isn't even anything alive. Just endless dreary rooms all the same, full of decaying figures covered in bird sh**t."

Piranesi is the name of a mutable, inscrutable prison surrounded by statues of impossible geometry, featured in the Sunless Skies video game.

This crossing of realms — the magical and scientific; the mystical and profane — in both Jonathan Strange and Piranesi is an alluring combination. As if Marie Curie meets Cleopatra on Mary Anning's beach. The mystery of Piranesi unwinds at a tantalizing yet lightening-like pace — it's hard not to rush ahead, even when each sentence, each revelation makes you want to linger. We learn how it is that Piranesi knows the words of our world, but lives in another — one where magic still thrives. The book is about a particular kind of resilience, surviving trauma by finding joy in an impossible situation. By making the book a fantasy, Clarke removes the horror just enough that you can get through the story in one piece. But I’ve been thinking about it for weeks. I’ve written and rewritten this essay a couple dozen times at this point to try to capture why it’s so important. Martin, Elyse (2 December 2020). "Beloved Child of the House: Susanna Clarke's Piranesi and the Renaissance Memory Palace". Tor.com . Retrieved 6 January 2023.

Writing 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.” As Piranesi records the wonders of the house in his journal – the birds and the clouds in its upper realms; the tides that move through it – he has regular meetings with a mysterious Other, the only person he believes to be alive, until he finds signs of another visitor. Published into the pandemic, this story of isolation took on an uncanny wider relevance – we were all confined to our own small worlds, and driven deeper into inner spaces. And this novel about another world has a clear and current message for our own: it dramatises the question of whether humanity’s role is to conquer or to belong. The Other wants to exploit this strange realm’s resources, to colonise dangerous new territory for his own glory; Piranesi is alert to the life force rippling through it, and content to live in community with non-human beings. The following year he was commissioned by Pope Clement XIII to restore the choir of San Giovanni in Laterano, but the work did not materialize. In 1764, one of the Pope's nephews, Cardinal Rezzonico, appointed him to start his only architectural work, the restoration of the church of Santa Maria del Priorato in the Villa of the Knights of Malta, on Rome's Aventine Hill. He combined Classical architectural elements, trophies and escutcheons with his own particular imaginative genius for the design of the facade of the church and the walls of the adjacent Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta.

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. In his relationship with the Other, we see his empathy and tolerance, as he works to see the best in the Other despite the dismissive, abusive treatment he receives from him.