Susanna Clarke, who published her debut novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell 17 years ago and then was struck with chronic illness, has won the Women’s Prize for Fiction for her second novel, Piranesi. Narrated by its eponymous hero as he explores the endless halls of a house that imprisons an ocean, Piranesi is “a truly original, unexpected flight of fancy which melds genres and challenges preconceptions about what books should be,” according to the chair of judges, Booker-winning novelist Bernardine Evaristo.