I'm not too worried about him at all.Ĭonnor Donevan and Jolie Myers produced and edited this interview for broadcast. So, yeah, I think he can go out into the world. I think he's a good character, and when my husband and I realized that the book was going to be published, we sort of looked at each other and said: How will he cope? Will he be OK? But I think he has a very strong spirit. Piranesi who narrates his own story lives (almost) alone in an immense house of vast, empty halls and huge, winding staircases, peopled only by numberless statues (an Angel caught on a rose bush, a Woman carrying a beehive, a King with a model of a walled city in one hand), numberless because the house is more than simply enormous, more. Piranesi, he has this sort of clarity of spirit, not exactly an innocence, but. On how it feels to let this character out into the world Piranesi loves birds and somebody said: Did you put that in because you're a bird watcher? And I wasn't really a bird watcher, but Piranesi kind of taught me - after I'd written it, I went out and I got bird table, and I got bird seed, and I fed the birds, and I looked after them because I felt: Piranesi would want me to do this - so I did it. And I was writing a story about someone who lives largely alone, but in a vast house, in a house in which there are many, many things to explore and many avenues of exploration, and there's still knowledge to be found and still wonders to be seen, and there's still beauty to fill your eyes, even though you are cut off from a lot of other things. I was aware while I was writing it that I was somebody who'd become incapacitated by illness, who is to a large extent housebound and cut off from people. On the parallels between her experience and Piranesi's
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I very much wanted to write another big book, but I didn't feel that was a very sensible place to start. But the pressure of all the years when I hadn't written, and all the stories I hadn't written, weighed very heavily on me. But I got to a point where I felt I could write. So at some points during my illness, I suffered very badly with cognitive impairment, with what they call brain fog. The pressure of all the years when I hadn't written, and all the stories I hadn't written, weighed very heavily on me. The statues and the house all feel generally overwhelmingly benevolent to him and he feels like he is in communion with them, like he is sort of almost having a conversation with the world in which he finds himself." "He's in a very strange and in some ways inhospitable place, but he doesn't feel it's inhospitable," Clarke explains.
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He catches fish in the oceans that roar through rooms down below. The fictional Piranesi explores the massive halls lined with towering statues. They're meant to be gloomy, but I find them quite attractive." I must admit, I kind of want to go to those fantastic prisons. "They could possibly be real places, but quite dark and looming. "He did some engravings of fantastic prisons which have haunted my imagination for a long time," Clarke says. His name comes from a real-life person, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, an 18th-century architect and artist. Her latest is called Piranesi - that's also her narrator's name - and his whole world is a strange, labyrinthine house. Now, 16 years later, Clarke is focused on feeling locked in. That blockbuster book was all about escape. The hedge maze is more or less what you’d expect, rather dusty in summer and worn from all the people’s feet but the space in which it stands, a great sunken rectangle surrounded by tall trees is very like an impossibly large, sunlit hall.Susanna Clarke's debut novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, was a sweeping page turner about ancient magic set during the Napoleonic Wars. Its ancient robots faithfully tend the birds and the trees and plants in a very Piranesi sort of way.Ĥ. This isn’t strictly speaking a labyrinth, it’s an intricate and surreal combination of trees and architecture – and it’s also in the sky. Laputa: The Castle in the Sky is a Studio Ghibli film by Hayao Miyazaki. The House of Asterion, a short story by Jorge Luis Borges contains a labyrinth very closely related to the one in Piranesi. Like Piranesi, she faithfully follows rituals, but unlike Piranesi her gods prove false in the end.Ģ. Like Piranesi, there is a question over her real name. Like Piranesi, Arha prides herself on her skill in negotiating the labyrinth’s paths. Once inside she is allowed to light a lamp or a torch. The protagonist, Arha, must enter the labyrinth in total darkness. It’s not a pleasant place, but it is fascinating (plus there’s a map, so you can walk around it by yourself if you like). It’s one of her Earthsea books and contains an underground labyrinth. We caught up with Susanna Clarke to ask her about her favourite mazes and how they inspired Piranesi.ġ. Susanna Clarke is the winner of this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction with her novel Piranesi, a gothic tale of a very singular, labyrinthine house and its mysterious inhabitants.