Orbital
Booker Prize Winner 2024.
Life on our planet as you’ve never seen it before: in this spellbinding and uplifting novel six astronauts rotate in the International Space Station. They are there to do vital work, but slowly they begin to wonder: what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?
Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents, and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.
Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction.
The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it.
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Samantha Harvey
Samantha Harvey (born 1975) is an English novelist. She is the author of five novels, The Wilderness, All Is Song, Dear Thief ,The Western Wind and Orbital. She is also the author of a memoir, The Shapeless Unease. She won the 2024 Booker Prize for her novel Orbital, which drew on conventions from multiple genres and fields, including literary fiction, science fiction, and philosophy.