Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
06/10/2026
Piranesi was one of my favorite reads of 2026. It is a speculative fiction novel that explores a magical labyrinth of vestibules, marble statues, and a mysterious rising and falling sea.
I got the idea for this redesign from the text structure of the novel. The narrator of the story is conducting a study and writes his story in the labyrinth in the form of a research journal.
With themes of psychology, I looked at publications of ancient Greek philosophers (Dialogues of Plato: Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Republic, by Washington Square Press, 1969. Paperback)
I allowed this to inspire the text format of the design, as well as highlighting a classic piece of artwork as the main background.
The name of the novel comes from the eighteenth century Italian printmaker, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, who focused on creating architectural landscapes of Rome including the many sculptures that remained from the Roman empire. He included these structures in his art work that included his imagery prisons, which inspired the setting of the novel.
I used the piece Fantasy of Ruins with a Statue of Minerva in the Center Foreground, the frontispiece for Vedute di Roma (Views of Rome) by Piranesi on this cover and colored it in blue to represent the ocean contained in the novel’s Piranesi’s world.
The contrasting yellow in the title and on the spine also hold significance to the novel. Yellow chalk plays an important role in the story. It is a sign of hope, a light, and a beacon that reaches out to the narrator. I decided to highlight this on the spine using a texture I created myself.
I used chalk on construction paper to create waves, photographer and uploaded them to Photoshop to use as a texture over the yellow to nod at the important imagery of chalk.
I really enjoyed dissecting this book. I felt like Piranesi led me down a rabbit hole into Susanna Clarke’s inspiration for this novel. I learned about art history, scholarly book design, and had the opportunity to revisit some of the dreamy and mysterious imagery within the novel.
