Samantha Harvey wins 2024 Booker Prize for ISS-set novel 'Orbital'

British author Samantha Harvey has won the 2024 Booker Prize for her novel Orbital, set aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Harvey, 49, received the $64,000 prize for the "space pastoral" that explores the lives of six astronauts orbiting Earth.

The award ceremony took place on Tuesday night at London’s Old Billingsgate, making Harvey the first woman since 2019 to receive the Booker Prize.

Chair of judges, Edmund de Waal, praised Orbital as a “book about a wounded world” that captures readers with its resonance and emotional depth. He described the novel as propelled by the beauty of sixteen daily sunrises and sunsets viewed from space, lauding Harvey’s language as both lyrical and precise.

Harvey wrote the novel during the COVID-19 lockdowns, drawing inspiration from hours of online footage from the ISS. Known for her unique perspective, she doesn’t own a mobile phone and dedicated the prize to “all the people who speak for and not against the Earth and work for and not against peace.”

Harvey, who grew up in Kent and studied philosophy, now teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University. Her previous works include The Wilderness (2009), which was longlisted for the Booker Prize, and The Western Wind, a historical novel set in 15th-century Somerset.