The 2024 Booker Prize for Fiction has gone to British author Samantha Harvey for her singular “space pastoral,” Orbital, set on the ISS. The book follows six astronauts in orbit above Earth, who struggle between isolation and the need for human contact. Harvey, 49, received the prestigious award that comes with a prize of USD 64,000.
The Booker Prize judges described Orbital as being in “lyrical” writing and emotionally deep. Edmund de Waal, Chair of the judging panel, said the novel “makes our world strange and new.” He added that Harvey’s story is “propelled by the beauty of sixteen sunrises and sixteen sunsets.” The judges were looking for a book that moved them and resonated with readers on both counts, Orbital delivered.
Harvey wrote the novel during lockdowns for COVID-19, after hours of online footage of the ISS. She was uncertain if the book was to be set in space, but she did not abandon her plan. “I thought, why would anybody want to hear from a woman in Wiltshire writing about space?” Harvey said. And she dedicated her prize to the ones “who speak for and not against the Earth.”
This is Harvey’s maiden Booker win, and the first time since 2019 that a woman has won the prize. Born in 1975 in Kent, Harvey studied philosophy and has worked in a variety of roles including at the Herschel Museum of Astronomy in Bath. She also tutors in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.
Harvey’s novel, The Wilderness, was longlisted for the Booker back in 2009, and since then she has written a string of widely acclaimed books such as The Western Wind and The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping. Her work has appeared in major publications such as Granta, The Guardian, and TIME Magazine.
ANI