Orbital by Samantha Harvey takes home the Booker Prize this year.
The chair of judges, Edmund de Waal, announced the winner at a ceremony in London. Samantha Harvey takes home a tropy, a cash prize of £50,000 and bragging rights! Samantha was presented with these items by Paul Lynch, last years winning author of Prophet Song.
Edmund de Waal was not short on praise for this years winner stating, ‘In an unforgettable year for fisction, a book about a wounded world. Sometimes you encounter a book and cannot work out how this miraculous event has happened. 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. We wanted everything.’
Orbital being only 136 pages long is one of the shortest ever Booker Prize winners, yet to compete with all that the judges of the Booker Prize were looking for says a lot for about the author. It is also one of the few novels set in space to be nominated for a Booker.
Set on the International Space Station hurling at more than 17,000 miles per hour above this blue marble we call Earth, Samantha Harvey populates her book with six Astronaut/cosmonauts from the US, Italy, Russia, Japan and the UK. It examines their relationship to mother earth and their interconnectedness being seperated from humanity.
Rotating about the earth in their spacecraft they are so together, and so alone, that even their thoughts, their internal mythologies, at times convene. Sometimes they dream the same dreams – of fractals and blue spheres and familiar faces engulfed in dark, and of the bright energetic black of space that lasm their senses.
Orbital
Samantha Harvey is an English novelist known for her critically acclaimed and award-winning works. Her novels often explore themes of memory, loss, and the passage of time, delving into the inner lives of her characters with profound depth and psychological insight. She is celebrated for her exquisite prose and her ability to create immersive and emotionally resonant narratives. Harvey is also a respected figure in the literary community, serving as a Reader in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and contributing to various writing programs and initiatives.
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