I'll admit I held off on Piranesi because I was mixed on Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which was imaginative, but long and alienating. This was a mistake. Piranesi is an absolute joy.

Our narrator lives in a Great House, an infinite labyrinth of cyclopean rooms and corridors, massive marble statues, lower chambers flooded with tides, airy upper chambers full of clouds and mist. The House provides for him with fish and seaweed and fresh water, and he records its events and wonders dutifully in his journal. Our narrator knows that Piranesi is not his name, but it's what the only other living person in the world calls him, a well-dressed man the narrator calls the Other, who is searching for some lost and ancient wisdom.


Carceri d'invenzione XV, from Imaginary Prisons by the real antiquarian Giovanni Battista Piranesi

The journal entries seem precious at first, with their Random Capital Letters, but their earnest belief in the absolute reality of this liminal world drew me in within a few chapters. The mystery of the House, the narrator's past, and the agenda of the Other unfold in a revelation of transgressive philosophy, cultist criminal academics, and the disappearance of magic.

This book is a gem!