Susanna Clarke

Biography

Susanna Clarke (born 1967) published her first novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, in 2004 after ten years of writing. It was a 1,000-page alternate history of magic in Regency England and became a major literary event. Then she went silent for sixteen years, during which she suffered from severe chronic fatigue syndrome. Piranesi (2020) emerged from that illness — Clarke has described it as a book she wrote in brief periods of relative wellness, a book that could only be short because sustained effort was medically impossible. The result is 272 pages that feel carved rather than written: every element necessary, nothing surplus.

Susanna Clarke at a glance