Susanna Clarke wins the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021

Susanna Clarke has won the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction for Piranesi, a highly original and haunting work that transcends genres.


This elegantly crafted novel about a man who lives in a fantastical House is both an exploration of the meaning behind language, and a timely study of solitude and isolation.

Bernardine Evaristo, Chair of the judging panel, commented: ‘With her first novel in seventeen years, Susanna Clarke has given us a truly original, unexpected flight of fancy which melds genres and challenges preconceptions about what books should be. She has created a world beyond our wildest imagination that also tells us something profound about what it is to be human.’

In her review of the novel, Readings bookseller Lian Hingee says that Piranesi is ‘a gorgeously written piece of fiction – at once poetic and sparse, metaphysical and cinematic’. Read the full review here.

Piranesi was shortlisted alongside five other brilliant works: No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood, The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller, Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi, and How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones.

As the winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Clarke receives prize money of £30,000 and a limited edition bronze known as a ‘Bessie’, created and donated by the artist Grizel Niven. Both are anonymously endowed.

Find out more about Clarke’s win on the Women’s Prize website.


Piranesi is available in both a hardback, and a new paperback edition

 Read review
Cover image for Piranesi

Piranesi

Susanna Clarke

In stock at 8 shops, ships in 3-4 daysIn stock at 8 shops