It's hard to describe the setting and the feelings this novel evokes because it's so original. It's like looking at a painting by Giorgio de Chirico, with its mysterious, unnerving ancient buildings looming in the background, casting imposing shadows across a sunset landsacpe. You crane your neck to see what is beyond the edge of the frame. What else is in this strange, surreal world? But you are limited by what the painting can show you.

De Chirico was my frame of reference, but the book was inspired by another artist I was unfamiliar with, and his name was also Piranesi. In Clarke's novel, the path between our reality and the surreal world is opened, for a moment. It's like a waking dream.

Those who would deny reality are the villains, yet the beauty of the dream world remains. Somehow we wish we could be the Piranesi at the start of the book, living in the mysterious, endless halls of his dreamlike dimension, a dangerous and lonely universe, but somehow beautiful at the same time.