Piranesi, a Novel by Susanna Clarke

 

Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi is a compact, hypnotic novel written as the journal of a man who calls himself Piranesi—though he does not know that this is not his real name. He lives in a vast, labyrinthine House made of endless halls, statues, tides, and clouds. The House feels sacred to him, and he moves through it with reverence, cataloging its features, tracking the movements of birds and tides, and caring for the thirteen skeletons he believes inhabit it. He thinks he is one of only two living people in the world: himself and “the Other,” a man who meets him twice a week, gives him tasks, and praises his intelligence while subtly manipulating him.

From the beginning, the reader sees what Piranesi cannot: he is being controlled. The Other is Valentine Andrew Ketterley—a name deliberately echoing the pathetic villain Andrew Ketterly from C.S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew. Clarke’s nod to Lewis and the Inklings runs deep: themes of lost worlds, magical thresholds, and moral corruption hang over every chapter. But unlike Lewis’s straightforward moralism, Clarke places the reader inside a consciousness so innocent and unguarded that the truth emerges slowly and painfully.

As Piranesi records his life in meticulous, lyrical prose, clues appear. Strange footprints. Forgotten journals in his own handwriting. Mentions of a world he does not remember. Eventually, another outsider enters the House and breaks the illusion. Gradually Piranesi learns that the House is not the world. He was once Matthew Rose Sorensen, a journalist investigating occult researchers. Ketterley forcibly trapped him in this alternate dimension, using him as a pawn in his search for hidden knowledge and power.

The revelation is not played for shock but for tragedy. Matthew Sorensen was stolen from himself, and Piranesi—the gentle, observant man shaped by the House—is what remains. By the end, he regains pieces of his past but refuses to abandon the compassion the House taught him. The novel becomes a meditation on identity, memory, and what survives after exploitation.

Piranesi reads like a quiet spell: precise, humane, and exquisitely crafted. It honors Lewis and the Inklings without imitation, offering instead a modern myth about wonder and the endurance of the self.