Susanna Clarke's 'Piranesi' wins Women's Prize for Fiction

LONDON – British writer Susanna Clarke won the prestigious Women’s Prize for Fiction connected Wednesday for her mind-tweaking phantasy caller “Piranesi" — a publication that chronic unwellness made her fearfulness she would ne'er get to write.

Clarke, 61, was awarded the 30,000 lb ($41,000) prize for her 2nd novel, which was published 16 years aft her first, “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell,” became a planetary best-seller.

Set successful a magical alternate reality, “Piranesi” is narrated by a antheral surviving successful a labyrinthine, statue-filled location -- unsocial but for a visitant known arsenic the Other — that comprises his full universe. As helium explores his domain, the character’s knowing of his satellite gradually shifts — and truthful does the reader’s.

Clarke thanked prize judges for honoring “a precise unusual publication indeed.”

“It’s a antithetic world. It’s a unusual world. It’s not this world,” she said of the novel’s setting. She said its enthusiastic reception showed that stories “don’t person to beryllium astir this satellite and modern beingness successful bid to resonate strongly.”

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Clarke’s archetypal novel, an epic magical saga, was published to acclaim successful 2004, sold much than 4 cardinal copies and was adapted for tv by the BBC. Clarke has said that enactment connected the follow-up was slowed by illness, arsenic she struggled with chronic fatigue syndrome.

She said “Piranesi” was “the publication I ne'er thought I would get to write. I ne'er thought I would beryllium good enough.”

“For a agelong time, I had encephalon fog, and you cannot constitute a caller if you tin get nary consistency of enactment and you can’t physique connected the enactment you did yesterday oregon a fewer days ago,” Clarke told The Associated Press. “But erstwhile I got amended capable to beryllium capable to enactment reasonably consistently, my formed of mind, my imagination, was not changed. The things that fascinated maine and the landscapes successful which I wanted to wander, that remained the same. It was possibly 1 of the fewer things that has stayed the aforesaid astir me.”

She said she hoped her triumph would promote different women incapacitated by agelong illness.

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“Piranesi” was published successful 2020, arsenic overmuch of the satellite was experiencing lockdown, isolation and dislocation due to the fact that of the coronavirus pandemic, and struck a chord with galore readers and critics.

“I deliberation a batch of radical who person experienced lockdown person recovered echoes successful the concern that Piranesi finds himself successful — much oregon little alone, successful a location that is the full world,” Clarke said.

Novelist Bernardine Evaristo, who chaired the Women’s Prize judging panel, said Clarke had “created a satellite beyond our wildest imaginativeness that besides tells america thing profound astir what it is to beryllium human.”

Clarke was 1 of 2 British authors among six finalists for the prize, founded successful 1996 and unfastened to pistillate English-language writers from astir the world. Previous winners see Zadie Smith, Tayari Jones and Maggie O’Farrell.

This year’s different finalists were American writer Brit Bennett’s “The Vanishing Half,” U.S. writer Patricia Lockwood’s “No One is Talking About This,” “Transcendent Kingdom,” by Ghanaian-American writer Yaa Gyasi, Barbadian writer Cherie Jones’ “How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House” and U.K. writer Claire Fuller’s “Unsettled Ground.”

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Clarke’s unwellness meant she had to shelve a much-anticipated sequel to “Jonathan Strange,” a rich, sprawling caller steeped successful humanities research. She said she has not abandoned anticipation of finishing it.

“Long years of not being capable to constitute mean I person each sorts of documents connected my laptop which unluckily person go similar unruly shrubs successful a garden,” she said. “They benignant of sprout retired successful each sorts of directions. But I bash anticipation that I volition present beryllium capable to get successful that plot and instrumentality immoderate pruning shears to immoderate of it and springiness them immoderate shape.”

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