Orbital: A Novel, by Samantha Harvey is the 2024 Booker Prize winner.
A short, luminous novel, it tells the story of six fictional astronauts (four Americans and two Russians) in a single spacecraft as they circle the earth 16 times over a 24-hour period.
Each circumnavigation is a chapter; each chapter is an exploration of the place of the planet earth in the solar system; or, the relationship of people to each other; or, the importance of immediate family to an individual; or, what drives an individual to
become an astronaut; or, the beauty of the solar system; or the joy of being alive and exerting oneself.
Filled with beautiful writing, lots and lots of adjectives, and profound insights about human existence, this novel deserved its prize and is well worth reading.
For an extra treat, look on YouTube for a live stream of space as seen from the camera of a spacecraft orbiting the earth and see what Samantha Harvey is describing. The technical information in this novel appears to be extraordinarily accurate. The author describes the book as an expression of beauty...it was.
--Janet Aserkoff
Orbital: A Novel, by Samantha Harvey is the 2024 Booker Prize winner.
A short, luminous novel, it tells the story of six fictional astronauts (four Americans and two Russians) in a single spacecraft as they circle the earth 16 times over a 24-hour period.
Each circumnavigation is a chapter; each chapter is an exploration of the place of the planet earth in the solar system; or, the relationship of people to each other; or, the importance of immediate family to an individual; or, what drives an individual to become an astronaut; or, the beauty of the solar system; or the joy of being alive and exerting oneself.
Filled with beautiful writing, lots and lots of adjectives, and profound insights about human existence, this novel deserved its prize and is well worth reading.
For an extra treat, look on YouTube for a live stream of space as seen from the camera of a spacecraft orbiting the earth and see what Samantha Harvey is describing. The technical information in this novel appears to be extraordinarily accurate. The author describes the book as an expression of beauty...it was.
--Janet Aserkoff