Booker Prize Winner

Orbital

by Samantha Harvey

Summary

Six astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station pass through a single day of sixteen sunrises, watching weather systems, continents, and a typhoon unfold beneath them while their own thoughts circle home, mortality, and fragile human attachments. Harvey's prose is meditative and image-saturated, closer to a long poem than a conventional novel. The book treats the planet itself as the central character.

Historical Context & Significance

The first book set in space to win; it is the second shortest winner in the prize's history.