Samantha Harvey’s Orbital Takes Home the 2024 Booker Prize

The short, wonder-filled book Orbital, written by British author Samantha Harvey and set onboard the International Space Station, received the 2024 Booker Prize. It explores the fragility and beauty of Earth ~ The best original English-language novel published in the United Kingdom is awarded the £50,000 Award each year. In Orbital, six astronauts spend a day looping through sixteen sunrises and sixteen sunsets, engrossed in each other's companionship and mesmerized by the constantly shifting landscapes of the world. Harvey read astronauts' books and watched the space station's live camera to study her work. "To look at the Earth from space is like a child looking into a mirror and realizing for the first time that the person in the mirror is herself," she said. "What we do to the Earth we do to ourselves."  She stated that the work “is not exactly about climate change, but implied in the view of the Earth is the fact of human-made climate change.”She said that the award is devoted to all those who speak "for and not against the Earth, for and not against the dignity of other humans, other life."                                                                  Hardwork Paid With a Creative Accomplishment (Source: Google Images)  Author and artist Edmund de Waal is the chair of this year's Booker Prize jury. Novelist Sara Collins, Guardian fiction editor Justine Jordan, author and lecturer Yiyun Li, and producer, composer, and musician Nitin Sawhney complete the jury. De Waal commended Harvey's "crystalline" language and "capaciousness" in her brief novel, which is among the shortest Booker winners ever at 136 pages in its U.K. paperback edition. "This is a book that repays slow reading," he stated. "Timely, hopeful, and timeless" That's the Beauty of this Book ~     Her Cry Out With Happiness Tell Us Everything (Source: Google Images)  The five-member judging panel was chaired by writer and artist Edmund de Waal, who described Orbital as a "miraculous novel" that "makes our world strange and new for us." "In a year of geopolitical crisis, likely to be the warmest year in recorded history," Gaby Wood, the chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, said the winning novel was “hopeful, timely, and timeless.”Harvey is the first British author to win the Booker Prize since 2020. She has authored four novels and a book on sleeplessness. The award, which has a reputation for changing writers' careers, is available to English-language authors of any country. Salman Rushdie, Hilary Mantel, Margaret Atwood, and Ian McEwan have all won before.  The winning title, just 136 pages long, is the second-shortest book to ever receive the prize and covers the briefest time span of any work on the shortlist—only 24 hours. De Waal shared that the judges reached a unanimous decision after a full day of deliberations. Selected from 156 entries submitted by publishers, Harvey triumphed over five other finalists representing Canada, the US, Australia, and the Netherlands.The Booker Prize was established in 1969 and is awarded for English-language novels that were first published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. Irish author Paul Lynch won last year for his post-democratic dystopian novel Prophet Song.  A Purposeful Road Up Ahead ~ At the ceremony, Lynch gave Harvey her Booker trophy and warned her that the notoriety boost from the Booker would drastically alter her life. In the week following its victory, Prophet Song's sales increased by 1,500 percent. His book's English-language edition has sold over half a million copies in the year since, and sales in all formats now amount to over 5,60,000 copies worldwide.Despite being "overwhelmed," Harvey claimed she was realistic about how she would use her prize money. She promised to pay "some of it on tax." I'd like to purchase a new bicycle. After that, I'd like to visit Japan.