*BOOKER PRIZE WINNER 2024*
 
Six astronauts and cosmonauts – from America, Russia, Italy, the UK and Japan – 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, as they travel at speeds of over 17,000 miles per hour, they watch their silent blue planet, circling it 16 times in a single day, spinning past continents, and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. 
We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. 
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.
Orbital is one of only a handful of novels set in space to have been nominated for the Booker Prize over the years, and is the first space-set winner. At 136 pages, it is one of the shortest ever Booker Prize winners, though not quite as short as Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald, winner of the 1979 prize.
Who is Samantha Harvey?