British author Samantha Harvey has won the prestigious Booker Prize with her novel set in space, Orbital.
Last night’s awards ceremony took place in London, with the judges unanimously deciding on Harvey’s novel, due to her “extraordinary intensity of attention to the precocious and precarious world we share”.
Accepting the award and £50,000 prize, Harvey said: “I’m completely overwhelmed.”
Drawing on the novel’s exploration of climate change, Harvey said: “It’s fair to say that no Booker speech has ever been made in a perfect world. But it is hard not to acknowledge the imperfections of the world we live in today.
“What we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves. I would like to dedicate this prize to everybody who speaks for, and not against the Earth.”
Orbital is the first novel set in space and the second-shortest novel to win the prize. It follows the perspectives of six astronauts watching 16 orbits of Earth over 24 hours on the International Space Station. Harvey watched thousands of hours of footage from the International Space Station for research.
Speaking to Mancunian Matters on Saturday, Harvey said: “All writers I know have an ambivalent view on awards. You have to manage expectations, but you need these things for your career.
On being shortlisted, she said: “It will always galvanise me. It feels unequivocally like a gift.”
Harvey was a museum worker before turning her hand to writing. Orbital is her fifth novel, and second to be longlisted for the Booker Prize.
‘Sometimes you encounter a book and cannot work out how this miraculous event has happened’
— The Booker Prizes (@TheBookerPrizes) November 12, 2024
We're delighted to announce that the winner of the #BookerPrize2024 is Orbital by Samantha Harvey. 🌌✨
Discover the book: https://t.co/Jx491BCyuj pic.twitter.com/R888OZEPE9
Winning the Booker Prize is often transformative for an author’s career. It is awarded to the best sustained work of fiction written in English and published in the UK and Ireland. Previous winners include Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and Bernadine Evaristo.
This year saw a record number of women – five out of six – nominated.
The five other shortlisted authors are Yael van der Woeden (The Safekeep), Anne Michaels (Held), Percival Everett (James), Rachel Kushner (Creation Lake) and Charlotte Wood (Stone Yard Devotional). They will all receive £2,500 and can expect an increase in book sales.
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