Orbital by Samantha Harvey won 2024 Booker Prize on Tuesday. She was the only British author on the shortlisted list for the prize.
Harvey’s novel was “unanimously” selected as the winner after a “proper day”, according to judging chair Edmund de Waal.
He added: “Our unanimity about Orbital recognizes its beauty and ambition. It reflects Harvey’s extraordinary intensity of attention to the precious and precarious world we share”.
On her side, Harvey said: “I was not expecting that,” adding: “We were told that we weren’t allowed to swear in our speech, so there goes my speech. It was just one swear word 150 times.”
She dedicated her win to those who “speak for and not against the Earth, for and not against the dignity of other humans, other life, and all the people who speak for, and call for, and work for peace”.
Orbital was published last November and was the highest-selling book of the shortlist novels. It sold 29,000 copies sold in the UK this year.
The novel revolves around its characters over the course of a day as they experience 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets, is a “finely crafted meditation on the Earth, beauty and human aspiration”, according to Alexandra Harris in her Guardian review.
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