Harry Hartog Shellharbour Fantasy Bookclub - Piranesi

This month's pick is 'Piranesi' by Susanna Clarke. Piranesi is a speculative fiction novel by English author Susanna Clarke, published by Bloomsbury Publishing in 2020. It is Clarke's second novel, following her debut Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), published sixteen years earlier. The novel is written as a journal from within a seemingly infinite, world-encompassing megastructure called the House. Piranesi won the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction. 'Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.' Please join us for our free event!' *Piranesi is reccomended for an audience of 12+