British writer Samantha Harvey’s space-station novel 'Orbital' wins the Booker Prize for fiction
British writer Samantha Harvey has won the Booker Prize for fiction with “Orbital,” a short, wonder-filled novel set aboard the International Space Station
LONDON (AP) — British writer Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for fiction on Tuesday with “Orbital,” a short, wonder-filled novel set aboard the International Space Station that ponders the beauty and fragility of Earth.
Harvey was awarded the 50,000-pound ($64,000) prize for what she has called a “space pastoral” about six orbiting astronauts, which she began writing during COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. The confined characters 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."
