The 2024 Booker Prize has been won by English novelist Samantha Harvey for her novel Orbital. It covers the lives of six astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
The award ceremony took place in London, this year’s jury was headed by British writer and artist Edmund de Waal. According to him, they unanimously favored Harvey’s novel. The writer received a prize of 50,000 pounds sterling.
“Orbital” – is the first book to win the Booker Prize, the action of which is set in space. The novel is about a day in the life of the ISS crew. In addition to detailing the astronauts’ working routines, the book also features their reflections on humanity and the Earth itself, touching on every conceivable topic from God to climate change. Each chapter of the novel covers one 90-minute orbit of the ISS around the Earth, and there are 16 orbits in 24 hours.
While writing the novel, Harvey watched a continuous live feed from aboard the ISS. She started work on the book back in the 2010s, but stopped after about 5,000 words, believing she lacked knowledge about a topic as complex as space travel. Fortunately, Harvey was able to find the strength to resume work on the novel and completed it during the pandemic. She characterized her work as a kind of cosmic pastoral — nature’s story about the beauty of space.
The book was well received by critics and became the best-selling work from this year’s Booker Prize shortlist in the UK. It has sold more copies than the three previous Booker Prize winners combined until their success. “This compact but beautifully constructed novel invites us to observe the beauty of the Earth while reflecting on the individual and collective value of each human life,” the award statement said.
It is also noted that this is the second, shortest novel in the award’s history — Orbital has only 136 pages. It is only four pages longer than Penelope Fitzgerald’s Offshore, which won in 1979.
Provided by BBC
