• British writer Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize with ‘Orbital’, a short novel set aboard the International Space Station.

• Harvey was awarded the £50,000 prize for what she has called a space pastoral about six astronauts circling the Earth, which she began writing during COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. 

• The winner was announced by Chair of the judges, Edmund de Waal, at a ceremony held at Old Billingsgate in London. 

• Last year’s winner was Irish writer Paul Lynch for ‘Prophet Song’.

Who is Samantha Harvey?

• Born in Kent in 1975, Samantha Harvey studied philosophy at the University of York and University of Sheffield. A writer and sculptor, in the 2000s, she worked at the Herschel Museum of Astronomy in Bath, the site from which the planet Uranus was discovered. 

• She is now a tutor on the MA course in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and the author of five novels. 

• She was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2009 for her debut novel ‘The Wilderness’, about an ageing architect who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. The book was awarded the Betty Trask Prize. 

• Harvey, whose writing has been compared to that of Virginia Woolf, is known for the enormous variety of her novels’ settings. 

• Prior to ‘Orbital’, her previous novel, ‘The Western Wind’, was about a priest in 15th century Somerset.

• In 2020 Harvey published her first book of non-fiction, ‘The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping’, about her personal experience of chronic insomnia.

• ‘Orbital’ is the first Booker Prize-winning book set in space. At just 136 pages long, it is the second-shortest book to win the prize and covers the briefest timeframe of any book on the shortlist, taking place over just 24 hours.

• Harvey’s novel takes place over a single day in the life of six astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station.

• The confined characters loop through 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets over the course of a day, trapped in one another's company and transfixed by the globe’s fragile beauty.

• Harvey is the first woman to win the Prize since 2019, when it was shared by Bernardine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood.

Other books in the shortlist:

• Held - Anne Michaels

• Creation Lake - Rachel Kushner

• James - Percival Everett

• The Safekeep - Yael van der Wouden

• Stone Yard Devotional - Charlotte Wood.

The Booker Prize

• The Booker Prize awards any work of long form fiction originally written in English and published in the UK and Ireland in the year of the prize, regardless of the nationality of their author. The work of long form fiction must be an original work in English (not a translation) and published by a registered UK or Irish imprint. Self-published works of long form fiction are not eligible. 

• The Booker Prize is worth £50,000 to the winner. It is awarded to the author of the best, eligible full-length work of long form fiction in the opinion of the judges. In addition, £2,500 is awarded to each of the six shortlisted authors.

• The Booker Prize for Fiction was first awarded in 1969.

• Past winners of the Booker include Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and Yann Martel.

International Booker Prize

• The International Booker Prize, formerly known as the Man Booker International Prize, has been awarded since 2005, when it was won by Albanian writer Ismail Kadare.

• It is awarded annually for a single book, translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland. 

• It is a sister prize to the Booker Prize.

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