British author Samantha Harvey has won the 2024 Booker prize for her novel Orbital, a meditation on Earth and humanity told through the story of six astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
The judges unanimously selected Harvey’s 136-page work, making it the second-shortest winning novel in the prize’s 55-year history.
Judging chair Edmund de Waal praised the book’s “beauty and ambition” and its “extraordinary intensity of attention to the precious and precarious world we share”.
In her acceptance speech, Harvey, who appeared surprised by the win, dedicated the award to those who “speak for and not against the Earth, for and not against the dignity of other humans, other life, and all the people who speak for, and call for, and work for peace”.
The novel, which follows the astronauts through 16 sunrises and sunsets over one day, has sold 29,000 copies in the UK this year, making it the bestselling book on the shortlist.
Harvey revealed she nearly abandoned the project, questioning her authority to write about space from her desk in Wiltshire, but was later encouraged when British astronaut Tim Peake praised the work.
Harvey, who receives £50,000, becomes the first woman to win the prize in five years.
She previously made the Booker longlist in 2009 for her debut novel, The Wilderness. She was chosen from a shortlist of six that included five women, a first in the prize’s history.
The winning novel was selected from 156 entries published between October 2023 and September 2024.
Previous winners include Paul Lynch, Shehan Karunatilaka, and joint winners Bernardine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood in 2019.
