![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The central character, known as “Piranesi,” emotional and mysterious though his bond with the house may be, is also a scientist. However, there was another aspect of the book that made me think again. The ancient Egyptian civilisation, for example, had priests whose job it was to intercede with the gods to make sure the Nile flooded regularly and replenished the soil.įrom this point of view I thought the scenario of Piranesi, an entire world built as a reflection of humanity’s doings, was as silly as expecting Egyptian priests to really control flooding with their prayers. This reflects the way many societies have viewed nature. ![]() The house appears to judge those within it through the action of natural events, rewarding those it favours and punishing those it doesn’t, mostly through the occurance of floods. The first involves the way people, self-regarding as always, tend to see their own affairs reflected in the world around them. The lower levels of “the house” are washed by ocean waves, the upper levels obscured by cloud, the mid levels habitable, at least if you know how to fish, and burn dried seaweed to stay warm. This takes the form of a series of vast, interconnecting halls on three levels stretching for hundreds of miles in all directions. Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke, published in September 2020, is set in a kind of parallel world. Sketch from the “Imaginary Prisons” series by Giovanni Piranesi – eighteenth century Italian archaeologist, architect and artist ![]()
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