PiranesiWinner of the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction A SUNDAY TIMES & NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The spectacular new novel from the bestselling author of JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL, 'one of our greatest living authors' NEW YORK MAGAZINE __________________________________ Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has. In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides that thunder up staircases, the clouds that move in slow procession through the upper halls. On Tuesdays and Fridays Piranesi sees his friend, the Other. At other times he brings tributes of food to the Dead. But mostly, he is alone. Messages begin to appear, scratched out in chalk on the pavements. There is someone new in the House. But who are they and what do they want? Are they a friend or do they bring destruction and madness as the Other claims? Lost texts must be found; secrets must be uncovered. The world that Piranesi thought he knew is becoming strange and dangerous. The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite. __________________________________ 'What a world Susanna Clarke conjures into being ... Piranesi is an exquisite puzzle-box' DAVID MITCHELL 'It subverts expectations throughout ... Utterly otherworldly' GUARDIAN 'Piranesi astonished me. It is a miraculous and luminous feat of storytelling' MADELINE MILLER 'Brilliantly singular' SUNDAY TIMES 'A gorgeous, spellbinding mystery ... This book is a treasure, washed up upon a forgotten shore, waiting to be discovered' ERIN MORGENSTERN 'Head-spinning ... Fully imagined and richly evoked' TELEGRAPH |
Contents
Part 2 The Other | 19 |
Part 3 The Prophet | 83 |
Part 4 16 | 123 |
Part 5 Valentine Ketterley | 171 |
Part 6 Wave | 185 |
Part 7 Matthew Rose Sorensen | 231 |
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Common terms and phrases
albatross Andrew Ketterley Arne-Sayles’s asked Batter-Sea beautiful birds Biscuit-Box bog bodies centimetres Clarke’s climbed dark Dead didn’t Door Doorway Dr Ketterley Drowned Halls Empty Plinth entry eyes face fish fishbones Flood grey happened head House Jonathan Strange Journal knew labyrinth Laurence Arne-Sayles looked Lower Halls Manchester Town Hall marble Marepool Matthew Rose Sorensen Maurizio Giussani messenger bag metres mind Minotaurs never ninth month Ninth Vestibule Norrell One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Second Western Hall Other’s paused Pavement Perhaps Piranesi poor James Ritter Prophet Raphael realised remember ritual seaweed Second South-Western Hall seemed shining device silence Sixteenth Person Sixth North-Western Hall someone sort Srinivasa Ramanujan Staircase Stanley Ovenden Stars Statues Susanna Clarke Sylvia D’Agostino talk tell There’s things Third Northern Hall thought Tides told Upper Halls Valentine Ketterley walked Wall Waters Whalley Range words World writing wrote