The annual Booker Prize Awards were held at Old Billingsgate in London on November 12th. This year’s shortlist made ground-breaking history for featuring five women authors as the finalists. The list was comprised of James by Percival Everett, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner, Held by Anne Michaels, The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden, and Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood. The winning author was set to take home a trophy, £50,000, and the honor of gracing a list of prestigious international authors.
And the winner of this year’s Booker Prize Award goes to…
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
This book has been skyrocketing through the literary world, as Harvey is also nominated for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize. This out-of-this-world science fiction novel follows the events of six men and women from a spectrum of different countries as they orbit around Earth. The book is a glimpse into the simple human moments of everyday life, with characters observing their planet from a bird’s-eye view.
A book about a wounded world…
Edmund de Waal, Chair of the judges for the Booker Prize Awards
I thought of it as space pastoral – a kind of nature writing about the beauty of space.
Samantha Harvey
Some fun facts about Orbital:
- At only 136 pages long, it is the second shortest book in the history of the awards.
- Also, a big win for science fiction fans, as it is the Booker Prize Awards’ first novel set in space.
Make sure to pick up your copy of Orbital today!
To check out some more award-winning books, click here to read 2023 Award-Winning Books to Add to Your 2024 TBR!
Click here to view our Dystopian Worlds, Technology, and the Universe in Science Fiction bookshelf on Bookshop.org.
