The 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction winner has been revealed as none other than Susanna Clarke, who took home the prize for her second novel, Piranesi.
Susanna Clarke
Published by Bloomsbury Australia, Piranesi is a mind-bending fantasy tale of secrets and madness that tells the story of a strange man and the even stranger house that he lives in. It is the successor to Clarke’s beloved first novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2004 and won the Hugo Award and the World Fantasy Award in 2005.
Upon winning the UK-based award for Piranesi, Clarke said,
‘As some of you will know, Piranesi was nurtured, written and publicised during a long illness. It is the book that I never thought I would get to write – I never thought I’d be well enough. So this feels doubly extraordinary; I’m doubly honoured to be here. And my hope is that my standing here tonight will encourage other women who are incapacitated by long illness.’
Bernardine Evaristo, 2021 Chair of Judges, said,
‘We wanted to find a book that we’d press into readers’ hands, which would have a lasting impact. 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.’
Clarke will take home £30,000 in prize money, along with a bronze figurine known as the ‘Bessie’, donated by the late sculptor Grizel Niven.
Congratulations to Susanna Clarke!
Find out more about the Women’s Prize for Fiction here
Piranesi
Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has.
In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides that thunder up staircases, the clouds that move in slow procession through the upper halls. On Tuesdays and Fridays Piranesi sees his friend, the Other. At other times he brings tributes of food to the Dead. But mostly, he is alone.
Messages begin to appear, scratched out in chalk on the pavements. There is someone new in the House...
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