On Tuesday 12 November, Samantha Harvey’s 5th novel Orbital was announced as the winner of the Booker Prize 2024 in Old Billingsgate, London. The ceremony was livestreamed on YouTube and broadcast in a special edition of BBC Radio 4’s Front Row.
The Booker Prize is awarded to what is, in the opinion of the judges, the best sustained work of fiction written in English and published in the UK and Ireland. The trophy comes with not only £50,000, but transformative effects for the winner’s career. The six shortlisted authors are also awarded £2,500 each. This year’s short list included James by Percival Everett, Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner, Held by Anne Michaels, The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden and Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood.
Taking place over just 24 hours in an International Space Station, Orbital follows 16 orbits of the earth, 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets. Samantha Harvey describes it as “an exercise in [earth-stuff pondering the earth]. To look at the earth from space is a bit like a child looking into a mirror and realising for the first time that the person in the mirror is herself… what we do to the earth we do to ourselves.”
It is noteworthy that a historic five of the six shortlisted authors this year were women, and that Samantha Harvey is the first woman to win the prize size 2019. The trophy was presented to Samantha by last year’s winner Paul Lynch (Prophet Song), whom she thanked in her speech and reminisced upon being “overwhelmed vicariously” for last year. The winner dedicated the prize to “everybody who speaks for and not against the earth, for and not against the dignity of other humans, other life, and all the people who speak for, call for and work for peace”.
You can watch the recording of the ceremony on The Booker Prizes’s YouTube channel, or listen back to the Radio 4 programme on BBC Sounds.
Words by Martha Luke
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