Piranesi lives in a vast, labyrinthine house filled with endless corridors and statues, as well as an ocean that floods the lower levels. He believes that he and “the Other”, who sometimes visits him for research purposes, are the only inhabitants. However, he gradually uncovers clues that suggest his reality may not be as it seems. Gradually, fragments from another world and his past emerge, causing him to question his identity, his relationship with the Other and the true nature of the House. This novel has a very soft and contemplative atmosphere and raises questions about the boundaries between other possible worlds. It is both touching and fascinating.
“In the late seventies he was in any case changing his ideas. He was less concerned with the content of lost beliefs and powers and more interested in where they had gone. Based on his earlier idea that the lost beliefs and powers constituted a sort of energy, he said this energy could not have simply winked out of existence; it must have gone somewhere. This was the beginning of his most famous idea, the Theory of Other Worlds. Simply put, it said that when knowledge or power went out of this world it did two things: first, it created another place; and second, it left a hole, a door between this world where it had once existed and the new place it had made.”