Booker Prize Winner 2024

The winner of the 2024 Booker Prize for fiction was announced today, with British author Samantha Harvey receiving the £50,000 prize for the novel, Orbital. 

Orbital tells the story of six astronauts floating high above the Earth at a space station where they conduct experiments on an extended mission. As they orbit the Earth sixteen times a day, the astronauts consider the state of the planet and the fragility of human life.  Readers learn about each astronaut through their communications with their families and the personal effects they brought on their journey.  While they are so far from earth, they feel inextricably linked to and protective of their planet.

Samantha Harvey hails from Kent. She studied philosophy at the Universities of York and Sheffield.  Harvey has written five novels and  was previously longlisted for the Booker in 2009 for her debut novel The Wilderness.

Chair of the Judging panel, Edmund de Waal, said of Orbital:

'In an unforgettable year for fiction, a book about a wounded world. Sometimes you encounter a book and cannot work out how this miraculous event has happened. As judges we were determined to find a book that moved us, a book that had capaciousness and resonance, that we are compelled to share. We wanted everything. 

‘Orbital is our book. Samantha Harvey has written a novel propelled by the beauty of sixteen sunrises and sixteen sunsets. Everyone and no one is the subject, as six astronauts in the International Space Station circle the Earth observing the passages of weather across the fragility of borders and time zones. With her language of lyricism and acuity Harvey makes our world strange and new for us. 

‘All year we have celebrated fiction that inhabits ideas rather than declaiming on issues, not finding answers but changing the question of what we wanted to explore. Our unanimity about Orbital recognises its beauty and ambition. It reflects Harvey’s extraordinary intensity of attention to the precious and precarious world we share.’"

I must admit I was surprised by the choice of Harvey as winner.  I had expected the winner to be Percival Everett for James, but was secretly longing for Charlotte Wood to be acknowledged for Stone Yard Devotional.  But I have not read Orbital yet, so will have to move it up my to be read pile. 

If you missed it, here is the video of the announcement of Samantha Harvey as winner and her acceptance speech.