2024 Booker Prize: Samantha Harvey’s ‘Orbital’ is the first winning novel to be set in space
At 136 pages, the British author’s novel is the second-shortest book to win the prize.
Join our WhatsApp Community to receive travel deals, free stays, and special offers!
- Join Now -
Join our WhatsApp Community to receive travel deals, free stays, and special offers!
- Join Now -
Orbital by Samantha Harvey is the winner of the 2024 Booker Prize. The author received a cash award of £50,000 and the trophy “Iris”, which was presented to her by Paul Lynch, the previous year’s winner.
Harvey’s novel takes place over a single day in the life of six astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station. The Chair of the judges, Edmund de Waal, described the novel as “a book about a wounded world” and that the jury – also comprising Sara Collins, Yiyun Li, Edmund de Waal, Nitin Sawhney and Justine Jordan – recognised its “beauty and ambition”.
Samantha Harvey was one of five women on the shortlist and is the first woman to win since 2019. Her novel Orbital has turned out to be 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 success.
It is the first Booker Prize-winning book set in space and at 136 pages long, it is the second-shortest book to win the prize. It covers the briefest timeframe of any book on the shortlist, taking place over just 24 hours.
Harvey said that she thought of Orbital “as space pastoral – a kind of...
