The author on how the celebration of solitude in her Women’s prize-winning new novel, Piranesi, grew from her experience of a long illness
Susanna Clarke’s subject is magic and her own story is a magical one too. Seventeen years after her bestselling, genre-busting doorstopper Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell about two rivalrous magicians was published to huge acclaim (Neil Gaiman declared it “unquestionably” the finest English fantasy novel of the last 70 years) she has won the Women’s prize for her second novel Piranesi.
Related: Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi is a triumphantly unusual Women’s prize winner