‘Six astronauts observe Earth’s splendour while navigating bereavement, loneliness and mission fatigue. Compact yet beautifully expansive, this is a love letter to our planet.’– The 2024 judges on Orbital.
Samantha Harvey is an English author who won the 2024 Booker Prize for her 2023 novel ‘Orbital.’ She is the first woman to win the award since 2019. Her writing style has been compared to that of Virginia Woolf.
This year’s shortlist had the most women authors ever. Out of the 6 shortlisted works, 5 of them were by women. It only highlights the increasing influence of female voices in contemporary and modern literature.
Other shortlisted works were ‘James’ by Percival Everett, ‘Creation Lake’ by Rachel Kushner, ‘Held’ by Anne Michaels, ‘The Safekeep’ by Yael van der Wouden and ‘Stone Yard Devotional’ by Charlotte Wood.
Harvey was born in Kent and lives in Bath. She studied philosophy at the University of York and the University of Sheffield. She has a PhD in Creative Writing.
‘Orbital’ takes place on the International Space Station. It gives an insight into the lives of six astronauts. These astronauts see 16 sunrises and sunsets in a 24-hour period.
In an interview, she described her book as ‘six humans orbit our glorious planet.’ Edmund de Waal, chair of the judging panel said that it is a tale about a ‘wounded world.’ She described her work as a ‘space pastoral.’ Orbital is also shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.
When asked what she would do with the prize money in an interview on The Booker Prize, she replied, ‘I would spend at least some of it buying time out of work to make some sculptures. Probably the rest I would blow on expensive Danish liquorice.’
She has published five novels till date. Her first novel ‘The Wilderness’ was published in 2009 by Jonathan Cape. It won the Betty Trask Prize, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Her second novel ‘All is Song’ was published in 2012. Her third work ‘Dear Thief’ came out in 2014. It was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.’ Her fourth novel ‘The Western Wind’ was published in 2018 and won the Staunch Book Prize.
She has also written a non-fiction piece titled ‘The Shapeless Unease.’ This work deals with her personal experience of chronic insomnia.
She was awarded the £50,000 prize in a glittering ceremony held at London’s Old Billingsgate for her 136 pages long book. Her novel is the second-shortest one to win this prize. The shortest work to win the prize was ‘Offshore’ by Penelope Fitzgerald in 1979.
In her acceptance speech, Harvey dedicated the prize to ‘everybody who does speak for and not against the Earth; for and not against the dignity of other humans, other life; and all the humans who speak for and call for and work for peace.’
Although her work can almost be called a science-fiction and is set in a high-tech location, she herself remains aloof from technology. She is not on social media and doesn’t own a mobile phone.
It is the first time that a novel written about space has received a Booker. The world is moving swiftly towards all things technology. Do you think that the sci-fi novels should get more recognition? What are your favorite sci-fi novels that you have read?
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