Orbital and Samantha Harvey – credit, CC BY-SA 4.0. Luminsh

British novelist Samantha Harvey has been awarded the 2024 Booker Prize for her novel Orbital. Described as a “space pastoral,” it was written through the perspectives of real-life  astronauts.

It was the best-selling book on the Booker Prize shortlist, outselling all three of the previous winners combined when measured on the eve of their awards.

It’s also the first novel set in space to win the award, and Harvey dedicated her victory to “all the people who speak for and not against the Earth and work for and not against peace.”

The 136-page work covers a single day of life on the International Space Station and is written through the voices and thoughts of six astronauts, a concept she admitted to the BBC gave her a sort of imposter syndrome.

“Why would anybody want to hear from a woman at her desk in Wiltshire writing about space when people have actually been there?” she said. “I lost my nerve with it and I thought I didn’t have the authority to write it.”

Harvey said she wrote it throughout lockdowns.

During the book’s 24 hours, the astronauts observe 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets, while seeing continents pass by with all their mountains, glaciers, and deserts dusted over and battered with weather, as well as all the ocean swells in between them.

Chair of the Booker judges, Edmund de Waal, described Orbital as a “book about a wounded world.”

“He said the judges all recognized its ‘beauty and ambition’ and praised her ‘language of lyricism,'” the BBC said.

When asked what she’ll do with the prize, she admitted she will use some of the £50,000 to buy a beautiful new bicycle.

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