The British author was one of five women on a history-making shortlist and the first woman to win since 2019.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey was named the winner of the Booker Prize 2024. Harvey receives £50,000 and a trophy, presented to her by Paul Lynch, last year’s winner, at a ceremony held at Old Billingsgate in London.
The Booker Prize is the world’s most significant award for a single work of fiction. It is open to authors from anywhere in the world who write in English and are published in the UK and/or Ireland.
Orbital, Harvey’s fifth and sixth novel, takes place over a single day in the life of six astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station.
During those 24 hours, they observe 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets over their silent blue planet, spinning past continents and cycling past seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans.
Chair of the judges, Edmund de Waal, described the winner as ‘a book about a wounded world’, adding that the panel’s unanimity about Orbital recognises its beauty and ambition.’
British author Samantha Harvey, one of five women on a history-making shortlist, is the first woman to win since 2019.
“I thought of it as space pastoral – a kind of nature writing about the beauty of space,” said Harvey.
Orbital has been the biggest-selling book on the shortlist in the UK and has sold more copies than the past three Booker Prize-winners had sold up to the eve of their success. It is the first Booker Prize-winning book set in space.
At just 136 pages long, it is the second-shortest book to win the prize and covers the briefest timeframe of any book on the shortlist, taking place over just 24 hours.
