Piranesi

For modern readers, is the 2020 award-winning fantasy novel by Susanna Clarke—a haunting, gentle mystery set in a house that is infinite.

Art critics describe the Carceri as “architecture of the mind.” Freudians see the subconscious. Existentialists see the absurd. Piranesi, however, was simply showing the power of the human imagination to create order that is indistinguishable from chaos. “I need to produce great ideas,” Piranesi once wrote. “I believe that if I were commissioned to design a new universe, I would be mad enough to undertake it.” His work directly influenced the Gothic novel (Horace Walpole), the Romantic poets (Coleridge), and eventually, cinema (the hallways of Inception and Alien ). In 2004, Susanna Clarke published Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell , a 1,000-page alternate history of magic. Fans waited 16 years for her next novel. When Piranesi arrived in 2020, it was shockingly different: a short, 245-page fever dream of a book. Who is the Protagonist Piranesi? The protagonist is not the Italian artist. He is a young man (or perhaps a middle-aged man; time is fluid) trapped in a place he calls the House . Piranesi

The House is a labyrinth of colossal Halls, Vestibules, and Statues. The lower floors are flooded with saltwater tides. The upper floors are filled with clouds and birds. There are no walls; only endless corridors of stone. There are windows, but they open onto other halls. For modern readers, is the 2020 award-winning fantasy

In his famous Vedute (Views), the Colosseum or the Appian Way looms larger than life, shrouded in dramatic, Rembrandtesque darkness. But it is his series of fourteen prints, Imaginary Prisons (1750), that cemented his name as an artist of the sublime. Look at The Round Tower or The Drawbridge . You are not looking at a dungeon. You are looking at a nightmare of scale. Stairs go nowhere. Archways span impossible distances. Machines that serve no purpose hang from the ceiling. The perspective is deliberately broken; your eye cannot find the floor or the ceiling. Piranesi, however, was simply showing the power of

The word “Piranesi” acts as a literary and artistic Rorschach test. Ask ten people what it means, and you will get two very different, yet equally passionate, answers.

The protagonist has given himself the name . Why? Because, like the artist, he catalogues everything. He draws the statues. He maps the tides. He names the fifteen dead skeletons scattered throughout the house. He is the archivist of the infinite. The Plot in a Nutshell (No Spoilers) The world of the book consists of only two living people (that he knows of): Piranesi and a brutal, paranoid man he calls The Other . Twice a week, The Other visits to discuss a mysterious “Great and Secret Knowledge” they are searching for.

Giovanni Battista saw the infinite and flinched. Susanna Clarke’s character saw the infinite and smiled. Between those two reactions lies the entire range of human experience—the terror of existence and the quiet joy of simply being there to witness it.