Samantha Harvey has won the Booker Prize for her poignant novel, Orbital.
In a ceremony held at Old Billingsgate, London on Tuesday night (12 November), the writer was presented the award by last year’s winner, Irish author Paul Lynch.
Harvey is the first woman to win the Prize since 2019, with her book being the biggest-selling title on the shortlist in the UK. Orbital has sold more copies than the past three Booker Prize-winners combined had sold up to the eve of their success.
At 136 pages, it is the second-shortest winner of the prize, and Harvey will receive a £50,000 prize and a trophy for her success.
The book follows 24 hours in the life of six astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Their minds wander to life on earth, and memories of their relationships as they share daily conversations with one other. They observe 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets passing continents and cycling through seasons.
Speaking about her novel, Harvey said she attempted to write from a place of realism rather than sci-fi and attempted to do so with “the care of a nature writer”.
She said, “I thought of it as space pastoral – a kind of nature writing about the beauty of space”.
The writer, who has been longlisted for the Booker in 2009 for The Wilderness, wrote Orbital during successive lockdowns as she watched footage of the Earth in low orbit on her desktop as she wrote.
It was the second time that the British author had been longlisted for the Booker, the first being in 2009 for The Wilderness, and marked the first time she had been shortlisted.
“It was my main reference point,” she said in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Front Row programme.
“I was writing about six people trapped in a tin can. It felt like there was something resonant about that and our experience of lockdown, of not being able to escape each other and also not being able to get to other people.”
Harvey explained how she almost gave up on the book after writing a few thousand words.
“I’ve never been in space, I could never go to space, and there are humans who’ve been to space who write very lucidly about it, so who am I to do this?” she said.
“I had a crisis of confidence and felt I was trespassing. So I gave up.”
She then returned to the draft during lockdown and decided to persevere.
With six astronauts including Americans, Russians, Japanese and Brits aboard the craft as they reflect on the absence of borders, chair of the judges panel Edmund de Waal denied that the Prize had taken into account any social or political issues occurring worldwide.
He also denied the award had been a “box-ticking” exercise, when asked if a man could have realistically won in a year when six women were shortlisted. It comes as Percival Everett’s James, a favourite to win, lost out, marking the second time the American Fiction author has been snubbed.
“I don’t think fiction has a practical impact. I’m not interested in books about issues,” said De Waal.
“I’m interested in books that inhabit ideas through fiction. I’m absolutely clear about that. So, this inhabits ideas through fiction. Whether it changes the next round of COP, it’s not for me as the chair of judges to say, I don’t understand the relationship between fiction and political action.
“What I can say is that extraordinary fiction can change people and their experience, and it can change collective reading. It can change conversations between people now that you can segue into whatever kind of, conversation you want. But I’m not saying this is a programmatic book, and I would never argue for books which have that written across as their subtitle.”
He added,” As judges, we are part of the world, and we are completely aware of what’s going on. I would just simply reiterate that we weren’t looking for, we aren’t looking for books that that in some pedestrian way addressed the conflict of the world.”
