Samantha Harvey Wins Booker Prize for Orbital

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Feel like fantasizing about an escape from Earth? Orbital, British writer Samantha Harvey’s fifth novel, set on the International Space Station, was awarded the Booker Prize in Fiction at a ceremony held today in London. Taking place over 24 hours, the book follows six astronauts (with some brief stop-offs from the perspective of nonhuman characters) from Russia, England, Japan, Italy, and the United States. They go about their daily lives and take care of their claustrophobic ship — and experience the awe that comes from being high above their home planet. “Harvey begins and ends with astonishment,” James Wood wrote in his review for The New Yorker.

Harvey was longlisted for the Booker Prize once before, for her first novel, 2009’s The Wilderness (that year’s winner was Wolf Hall, which, fair). This year, she beat out Creation Lake, by Rachel Kushner; Held, by Anne Michaels; The Safekeep, by Yael van der Wouden; Stone Yard Devotional, by Charlotte Wood; and James, by Percival Everett. “In offering us a vision of our planet as borderless and interlinked, Harvey makes the case for the futility of territorial conflicts, and the need for co-operation and respect for our shared humanity,” the judges said. Orbital is the first Booker Prize winner to be set in space and the second-shortest book to be awarded the prize.