Susanna Clarke – British author of the 20th–21st centuries, acclaimed for Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, winner of the Hugo Award. She reimagined 19th-century England as a place where history and magic coexist. Her style blends irony, gothic atmosphere, and subtle English wit. After a long hiatus, Clarke returned triumphantly with Piranesi.
📖 Spent over a decade writing her first novel. 📚 Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell became a bestseller and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. 🎬 Adapted into a BBC series in 2015. 💡 Worked in publishing and wrote in her spare time before fame. 🖋 Style often likened to Austen and Dickens–with magic. 🌍 Piranesi won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2021. 🎓 Studied philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford. 👩💻 Attended writing workshops in the 1990s, where Neil Gaiman encouraged her. 💡 Battled chronic fatigue syndrome, which kept her from writing for years. 😮 Her debut was dubbed “Harry Potter for adults.” 😄 Joked that Piranesi “was faster to write since it had fewer, more polite characters.”