piranesi winner of the women's prize 2021

So this feels doubly extraordinary.” She added: “My hope is that my standing here tonight will encourage other women who are incapacitated by long illness.” It is the book that I never thought I would get to write-I never thought I’d be well enough. Accepting the £30,000 award today in London, she said, “As some of you will know, Piranesi was nurtured, written and published during a long illness. Since publishing her debut Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, now a cult classic, 17 years ago, Clarke has suffered from chronic illness, which made writing difficult.

Previous winners include Zadie Smith, Tayari Jones and Maggie O’Farrell.Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi has won the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Novelist Bernardine Evaristo, who chaired the Women’s Prize judging panel, said Clarke had “created a world beyond our wildest imagination that also tells us something profound about what it is to be human.”Ĭlarke was one of two British authors among six finalists for the prize, founded in 1996 and open to female English-language writers from around the world. Susanna Clarke on winning this year’s #WomensPrize for Fiction for Piranesi 👏 /bYNUA0uIwz ‘It is the book I never thought I’d be well enough to write. “I think a lot of people who have experienced lockdown have found echoes in the situation that Piranesi finds himself in - more or less alone, in a house that is the whole world,” Clarke said.

“Piranesi” was published in 2020, as much of the world was experiencing lockdown, isolation and dislocation because of the coronavirus pandemic, and struck a chord with many readers and critics. She said she hoped her victory would encourage other women incapacitated by long illness. It was perhaps one of the few things that has stayed the same about me.” The things that fascinated me and the landscapes in which I wanted to wander, that remained the same. “But when I got better enough to be able to work fairly consistently, my cast of mind, my imagination, was not changed. “For a long time, I had brain fog, and you cannot write a novel if you can get no consistency of work and you can’t build on the work you did yesterday or a few days ago,” Clarke told The Associated Press. She said “Piranesi” was “the book I never thought I would get to write. Clarke has said that work on the follow-up was slowed by illness, as she struggled with chronic fatigue syndrome. A post shared by Bloomsbury Publishing first novel, an epic magical saga, was published to acclaim in 2004, sold more than 4 million copies and was adapted for television by the BBC.

Piranesi winner of the women's prize 2021