"Orbit," a short novel of epic power and winner of the 2024 Booker Prize, brilliantly depicts a single day in the lives of six men and women traveling in space. Chosen for one of the space station's final missions before the program ends, these astronauts—from America, Russia, Britain, and Japan—left their lives behind to travel at over 17,000 miles per hour. As the Earth spins beneath them, we glimpse moments of their lives on Earth through their brief communications with their families, photographs, and belongings. We watch them prepare dehydrated meals, sleep floating, and engage in rigorous exercise to prevent their muscles from atrophying. We watch them form bonds that will prevent them from being completely isolated. Most importantly, we accompany them as they observe and document their silent blue planet. Their experiences with sixteen sunrises and sunsets, and with the glittering asteroids in the galaxy, are an amazing mixture of dazzling grandeur and unexpected emotion.

“Orbit” is a profound and contemplative novel, a moving elegy for our environment and our planet.

Orbital novel

● Winner of the 2024 Booker Prize and a New York Times bestseller.

● Winner of the 2024 Hawthorne Prize.

● Nominated for the 2024 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.

● Nominated for the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction.

The author

Samantha Harvey is the author of the novels Orbital, The Wilderness, All is Song, Dear Thief, and The Western Wind, as well as her non-fiction book The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping. Orbit won the 2024 Booker Prize, and her other works have been shortlisted for the James Tait Black Award, the Women's Prize, the Guardian First Book Award, and the Walter Scott Prize. The Wilderness was awarded the Betty Trask Prize. Samantha Harvey is a tutor on the MA Creative Writing programme at Bath Spa University.