Samantha Harvey’s ‘attrvivacious and driven’ Orbital triumphs Booker prize | Books

Orbital by Samantha Harvey, the only British producer foolishinutiveenumerateed this year, has won the 2024 Booker prize, the UK’s most prestigious prize for fantasy.

Harvey’s tale of six fantasyal astronauts on the International Space Station was “agreedly” chosen as the triumphner after a “proper day” pondering the six-sturdy foolishinutiveenumerate, according to judging chair, the artist and author Edmund de Waal. “Our unanimity about Orbital recognises its beauty and ambition. It mirrors Harvey’s exceptional intensity of attention to the precious and precarious world we spread”.

“I was not foreseeing that,” shelp Harvey in her hugance speech. “We were tbetter that we weren’t permited to swear in our speech, so there goes my speech. It was fair one swear word 150 times.”

She went on to dedicate her triumph to those who “speak for and not aacquirest the Earth, for and not aacquirest the dignity of other humans, other life, and all the people who speak for, and call for, and labor for peace”.

Orbital, which was published last November and is now useable in paperback, was the highest-selling book of the foolishinutiveenumerate in the run-up to the triumphner proclaimment, with 29,000 copies sbetter in the UK this year. The book, which adheres its characters over the course of a day as they experience 16 sunelevates and 16 sunsets, is a “finely produceed meditation on the Earth, beauty and human aspiration”, wrote Alexandra Harris in her Guardian appraise.

At 136 pages extfinished, Orbital is the second-foolishinutiveest book to triumph the prize in its history; it is four pages extfinisheder than Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald, which won in 1979. Asked whether the panel’s choice is a vote in favour of foolishinutive books, De Waal shelp “absolutely not”, compriseing that Orbital is “the right length of book for what it’s trying to accomplish”.

Harvey shelp that she cforfeitly gave up on writing Orbital becaparticipate she thought: “Why on earth would anybody want to hear from a woman at her desk in Wiltsemploy writing about space, imagining what it’s enjoy being in space, when people have actuassociate been there? I lost my nerve with it, I thought, I don’t have the authority to produce this book.”

Orbital was bookproducer William Hill’s combinet favourite to triumph, aextfinished with Percival Everett’s James, a reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the enslaved Jim. James was the favourite at Ladbrokes, and critics consentd that Everett was most probable to get home the prize. With Everett being the only man on the foolishinutiveenumerate, this year labeled the first time that five women were foolishinutiveenumerateed in the prize’s 55-year history. Taking home the £50,000 prize on Tuesday evening, Harvey has become the first woman to triumph the award in five years. Asked what she would spfinish the prize money on, Harvey shelp that she necessitates a recent bike.

Harvey was previously extfinishedenumerateed for the Booker prize in 2009 for her debut novel, The Wilderness. Orbital is her fifth, adhereing All Is Song, Dear Thief and The Weserious Wind. She has also written a memoir on insomnia, The Shapeless Unease, which was published in 2020.

Shortenumerateed with Harvey and Everett were Rachel Kushner for Creation Lake, Anne Michaels for Held, Yael van der Wouden for The Safepersist and Charlotte Wood for Stone Yard Devotional.

Aextfinishedside De Waal on this year’s judging panel were noveenumerates Sara Collins and Yiyun Li, Guardian fantasy editor Justine Jordan, and musician Nitin Sawhney. “As appraises we were determined to discover a book that shiftd us, a book that had capaciousness and resonance, that we are compelled to spread,” shelp De Waal. “We wanted everyleang.”

“Orbital is our book,” he compriseed. “Everyone and no one is the subject, as six astronauts in the International Space Station circle the Earth observing the passages of weather atraverse the fragility of borders and time zones. With her language of lyricism and acuity, Harvey produces our world strange and recent for us.”

The triumphner was chosen from 156 books published between 1 October 2023 and 30 September 2024. To be eligible, books had to have been written originassociate in English by an author of any nationality, and published in the UK or Ireland. Before 2014, only books by producers from the Commonwealth, Ireland and Zimbabwe were eligible.

One of last year’s appraises, the comedian Robert Webb, called the task of reading every produceted book “impossible”, compriseing that “you finish as many as you can and the other ones you put to one side after a esteemable but undisseald fraction has been read.” However, De Waal shelp this year’s appraises “read every individual one brimmingy”.

Last year, Irish producer Paul Lynch took home the award for his dystopian novel Prophet Song. Other recent triumphners include Shehan Karunatilaka, Damon Galgut and Douglas Stuart. The last time a woman was proclaimd as triumphner was in 2019, when Bernardine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood were named combinet triumphners.