Piranesi
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3 Months Free + £10 Audible voucher
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Piranesi
Narrated by:
Chiwetel Ejiofor
Buy Now for £21.99
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Narrated by:
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Chiwetel Ejiofor
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By:
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Susanna Clarke
Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls lined with thousands upon thousands of statues. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; and waves thunder up staircases, while 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.
“Spellbinding, strange, and unforgettably original” (Esquire), Piranesi introduces an astonishing new world, an infinite labyrinth, full of startling images and surreal beauty.©2020 Susanna Clarke (P)2020 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
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Critic reviews
[Piranesi] flooded me, as the tides flood the halls, with a scouring grief, leaving gleaming gifts in its wake… rich, wondrous, full of aching joy and sweet sorrow.
A novel that feels like a surreal meditation on life in quarantine.
Piranesi astonished me. It is a miraculous and luminous feat of storytelling, at once a gripping mystery, an adventure through a brilliant new fantasy world, and a deep meditation on the human condition: feeling lost, and being found. I already want to be back in its haunting and beautiful halls!
Unforgettable — surely one of the most original works of fiction this season. It drops you into a mind-bending fantasy world, a vast labyrinth with infinite rooms and seas that sweep into halls and up staircases with the tides. … It's a hypnotic tale that you can devour in a day (and probably will; it's that hard to put down).
Piranesi is a high-quality page-turner—even the most leisurely reader will probably finish it off in a day—but its chief pleasure is immersion in its strange and uncannily attractive setting. . . Establishing that sense of totality—and the feeling of peacefulness that accompanies it—is Ms. Clarke’s standout feat.
Could Piranesi match [the hype]? I’m delighted to say it has, with Clarke’s singular wit and imagination still intact in a far more compressed yet still captivating tale you’ll want to delve into again right after you read its sublime last sentence.
Piranesi is a gorgeous, spellbinding mystery that gently unravels page by page. Precisely the sort of book that I love wordlessly handing to someone so they can have the pleasure of uncovering its secrets for themselves. This book is a treasure, washed up upon a forgotten shore, waiting to be discovered.
A short and beautiful novel that reads like a poem, not in its use of language (which is very accessible) but rather in its cumulative effect of expressing an emotion and state of being that is inexpressible. It’s a strange and lovely read.
What a world Susanna Clarke conjures into being, what a tick-tock-tick-tock of reveals, what a pure protagonist, what a morally-squalid supporting cast, what beauty, tension and restraint, and what a pitch-perfect ending. Piranesi is an exquisite puzzle-box far, far bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
Destined to become a work of classic fantasy.
Piranesi Will Wreck You: The novel establishes Susanna Clarke as one of our greatest living writers.
One of my favorite contemporary novels.
Infinitely clever… none of [Clarke’s] enchantment has worn off — it’s evolved. . . to abide in these pages is to find oneself happily detained in awe.
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