Piranesi
by Susanna Clarke
★ Top 10 book of 2020 · #10 on Best Books of 2020
Piranesi lives happily in an endless house of vast halls, countless statues and ocean tides that flood the rooms. When evidence of another presence appears, a troubling truth starts to unravel the only world he has known.
Best for: Readers who love dreamlike, surreal worlds and fans of Gaiman or Madeline Miller
Piranesi is #10 on BookWard's Best Books of 2020, out of 65 2020 books that cleared our data bar.
What Piranesi is about
Piranesi lives in the House, a seemingly endless building of vast halls lined with statues, where clouds gather in the upper levels and an ocean fills the lower ones. He is content there. He tracks the tides carefully and writes each day in his journals. Twice a week he meets the Other, who asks for his help in searching for a Great and Secret Knowledge.
The Other warns him that the House wears away memory and that a sixteenth person may arrive and bring him harm. Then Piranesi finds journal entries in his own hand that he cannot recall writing, and the world he thought he understood begins to shift. Told as his journal, this novel by Susanna Clarke is about a man named Piranesi who lives in a place called the House. It explores memory, solitude, and wonder, and suits readers who enjoy quiet, strange, beautifully imagined worlds.
Piranesi on the Best Books of 2020
Piranesi came out in 2020. Of the 65 books first published in 2020 that met BookWard's data bar, it ranks #10 on our Best Books of 2020 list.
Why it made the list: 496 readers have shelved it on Open Library; readers rate it 4.3 out of 5 (63 ratings). The list ranks each year’s books on how many readers have picked them up, how highly readers rate them, and how many are reading them right now.
It earns Reader favorite.
Nearby on the 2020 list
- Think Like a Monk Jay Shetty, #8
- The Tower of Nero Rick Riordan, #9
- Guest List Lucy Foley, #11
- The Almanack of Naval Ravikant Eric Jorgenson, #12
See all Best Books of 2020 Best books by year
More years: Best Books of 2019 Best Books of 2021.
The numbers behind it
- Readers: 390 want to read it, 10 are reading it now and 96 have read it, according to Open Library.
- Ratings: 4.3 out of 5 from 63 Open Library ratings.
| Signal | This book (0 to 100) | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Reach | 77 | 55% |
| Reader love | 91 | 25% |
| Being read right now | 58 | 20% |
Questions about Piranesi
When was Piranesi published?
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke was first published in 2020.
Was Piranesi one of the best books of 2020?
Piranesi is #10 on BookWard's Best Books of 2020, out of 65 2020 books that cleared our data bar. 496 readers have shelved it on Open Library; readers rate it 4.3 out of 5 (63 ratings).
Why is Piranesi on the Best Books of 2020 list?
496 readers have shelved it on Open Library; readers rate it 4.3 out of 5 (63 ratings).
More of the best books of 2020
- Good Girl, Bad Blood Holly Jackson, #1
- The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Suzanne Collins, #2
- The Psychology of Money Morgan Housel, #3
- The Inheritance Games Jennifer Lynn Barnes, #4
- Heartstopper, Volume 3 Alice Oseman, #5
- The Midnight Library Matt Haig, #6
See the full Best Books of 2020, the Top 100, or new books on Rising.
How we know
This page uses public data: Open Library reader counts and ratings, and Wikipedia page views for recent years. The description is paraphrased from real source text. Rankings reflect reading interest, not quality or sales, and can be affected by data gaps. Lists update monthly.
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