British author Samantha Harvey wins the 2024 Booker Prize for space novel Orbital
Canadian writer Anne Michaels was shortlisted for her novel Held
British author Samantha Harvey has won the 2024 Booker Prize for her novel Orbital, a short, wonder-filled novel set aboard the International Space Station that ponders the beauty and fragility of Earth.
The £50,000 (approx. $88,911 Cdn) prize annually recognizes the best original novel written in the English language and published in the U.K.
In Orbital, six astronauts loop through 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets over the course of a day, trapped in one another's company and transfixed by the globe's ever-changing vistas.
"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," said Harvey, who researched her novel by reading books by astronauts and watching the space station's live camera. "What we do to the Earth we do to ourselves."
She said the novel "is not exactly about climate change, but implied in the view of the Earth is the fact of human-made climate change."
She dedicated the prize to everyone who speaks "for and not against the Earth, for and not against the dignity of other humans, other life."
"All the people who speak for and call for and work for peace — this is for you," she said.
This year's Booker Prize jury is chaired by artist and author Edmund de Waal. Rounding out the jury is novelist Sara Collins, Guardian fiction editor Justine Jordan, writer and professor Yiyun Li and musician, composer and producer Nitin Sawhney.
De Waal praised the "crystalline" writing and "capaciousness" of Harvey's succinct novel — at 136 pages in its U.K. paperback edition, one of the shortest-ever Booker winners.
"This is a book that repays slow reading," he said.
The shortlisted books were James by Percival Everett, Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner, Held by Anne Michaels, The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden and Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood.
Held, which weaves together historical figures and events in a mysterious narrative that spans generations, was the only book by a Canadian on this year's shortlist.
Many of the shortlisted books are available in accessible formats on the Centre for Equitable Library Access website.
The shortlisted writers will receive £2,500 (approx. $4,445 Cdn) and a specially bound copy of their book.
Since 2013, authors from any nationality have been eligible for the Booker Prize. Past Canadian winners include Margaret Atwood, who shared the 2019 prize with British novelist Bernardine Evaristo. Atwood was recognized for her novel The Testaments, and Evaristo for her novel Girl, Woman, Other. They split the prize money evenly.
Two other Canadians have won the prize since its inception in 1969: Michael Ondaatje in 1992 for The English Patient and Yann Martel in 2002 for Life of Pi.
Last year's winner was Irish writer Paul Lynch for Prophet Song.
With files from The Associated Press
