Samantha Harvey Wins 2024 Booker Prize: What Is Her Book 'Orbital' About?

British writer Samantha Harvey won the 2024 Booker Prize for fiction on November 12, for her novel, Orbital. She was awarded the £50,000 (₹53.7 lakh) prize for what she has called a “space pastoral” about a team of astronauts viewing the Earth from space. Harvey made history as the first woman in five years to win this prestigious literature award. This year's shortlist of six novels had a historic majority of women writers from around the world.

The Booker Prize 2024 winner was announced by the Chair of the judges, Edmund de Waal, at a ceremony held at Old Billingsgate in London. Harvey received the trophy from 2023 winner, Paul Lynch. The event was attended by many dignitaries including Queen Camila of the British royal family.

Samantha Harvey Takes Home Booker Prize 2024

In her speech, after she was announced the winner, Samantha Harvey joked, "We were told that we weren’t allowed to swear in our speech, so there goes my speech. It was just one swear word 150 times!" She dedicated her win to those who “speak for, and call for, and work for peace”.

According to The Guardian, Edmund de Waal described Orbital as "a book about a wounded world", adding "[The panel's] unanimity about Orbital recognises its beauty and ambition. It reflects Harvey’s extraordinary intensity of attention to the precious and precarious world we share."

About Orbital

Six astronauts in the International Space Station for 24 hours observe the mystiques of the planet Earth from their unique vantage point miles away. Samantha Harvey began writing Orbital during the COVID-19 lockdowns, drawing on themes of isolation, perception, and interconnectedness.

Harvey said that she nearly gave up on writing Orbital because she thought, “Why on earth would anybody want to hear from a woman at her desk in Wiltshire writing about space, imagining what it’s like being in space when people have actually been there? I lost my nerve with it. I thought, I don’t have the authority to write this book." 

Orbital was published in November 2023 and was the highest-selling book on the 2024 shortlist, with 29,000 copies sold in the UK this year. It has 136 pages, just four pages longer than the shortest book to ever earn the Booker Prize-- Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald, which won in 1979.