Book Club Guide

Piranesi

by Susanna Clarke · 2020 · Fantasy

Key themes

Memory, identity and the self that endures under erasure
The House as a complete world — and what it asks us to believe
Isolation and the question of what constitutes knowledge

About this book

A man lives alone in an endless house of statues and tides; a short, strange, haunting puzzle of a novel.

Published in 2020, Piranesi is Clarke's second novel, following Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by sixteen years. It grew from an image Clarke had of a man living in a house filled with the sea. It sold a million copies in its first year.

Discussion questions

Piranesi does not know who he is. How does Clarke build a reader's relationship with a narrator who is himself a mystery — and what makes him sympathetic despite his bewilderment?
The House is an impossible place — infinite halls, statues, tides. How does Clarke make this setting feel internally consistent — and what does it gain from never being explained scientifically?
The novel reveals what the House actually is and what happened to Piranesi's identity. How does this revelation reframe everything you've read — and does the earlier mystery remain affecting after it?
Piranesi keeps meticulous journals. What does this habit say about his character — and how does it function as both a plot device and a meditation on what knowledge is for?
Piranesi won the Women's Prize and the WFA in 2021. What distinguishes it from other fantasy novels — and is it better described as fantasy, mystery, or something else?