Harvey wins 2024 Booker Prize for ‘Orbital’
In the UK, Samantha Harvey has won the 2024 Booker Prize, worth £50,000 (A$97,635), for Orbital (Vintage).
Orbital takes place over a single day in the life of six astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station. ‘Compact yet beautifully expansive, Orbital invites us to observe Earth’s splendour, whilst reflecting on the individual and collective value of every human life,’ said the prize organisers.
Chair of the judges Edmund de Waal said the judging panel’s ‘unanimity about Orbital recognises its beauty and ambition’, describing the novel as ‘a book about a wounded world’.
‘As judges we were determined to find a book that moved us, a book that had capaciousness and resonance, that we are compelled to share,’ said De Waal. ‘We wanted everything. Orbital is our book.’
De Waal continued: ‘Harvey has written a novel propelled by the beauty of sixteen sunrises and sixteen sunsets. Everyone and no one is the subject, as six astronauts in the International Space Station circle the Earth observing the passages of weather across the fragility of borders and time zones. With her language of lyricism and acuity, Harvey makes our world strange and new for us.’
Said Harvey of writing Orbital: ‘I thought of it as space pastoral—a kind of nature writing about the beauty of space.’
According to the Booker Prize, Orbital has been the biggest-selling book on the shortlist in the UK, and has sold more copies than the past three Booker Prize winners combined had sold up to the eve of their wins. The first Booker Prize–winning book set in space, Orbital is also the second-shortest book to win the prize, at 136 pages long.
Harvey’s novel was chosen from a shortlist of six that also included Stone Yard Devotional by Australian author Charlotte Wood. Jenny Darling & Associates reported the sale of rights to Stone Yard Devotional in 11 territories in the lead-up to the Frankfurt Book Fair.
Last year’s winner was Paul Lynch for Prophet Song (Oneworld).
More information about the award is available at the Booker Prize website.
Category: International awards International news
