‘Orbital,’ by Samantha Harvey, wins the Booker Prize

“Orbital,” the fifth novel by Samantha Harvey, won the 2024 Booker Prize for fiction on Tuesday. The novel follows astronauts over the course of 24 hours on a space station. The prize comes with a cash award of 50,000 pounds (just under $64,000).

After being handed the trophy by last year’s winner, Paul Lynch, Harvey said: “I was not expecting that. We were told that we weren’t allowed to swear in our speech. So there goes my speech.”

Reflecting on the themes of her book and “the imperfections of the world that we live in today,” Harvey cited Carl Sagan’s remark that “we are star stuff pondering stars.” She added: “We are also Earth stuff pondering the Earth. And I think my novel is an exercise in that pondering. To look at the Earth from space is a bit like a child looking into a mirror and realizing for the first time that the person in the mirror is herself. What we do to the Earth we do to ourselves.”

In the days leading up to the announcement, British oddsmakers had made Harvey and Percival Everett the most likely winners. Everett’s “James,” a retelling of Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from the perspective of the enslaved Jim, recently won the Kirkus Prize for fiction and is a finalist for this year’s National Book Award. Everett was also shortlisted for the Booker in 2022, for his bleak comedy “The Trees.”

In addition to Harvey and Everett, this year’s finalists were Rachel Kushner, for “Creation Lake”; Anne Michaels, for “Held”; Yael van der Wouden, for “The Safekeep”; and Charlotte Wood, for “Stone Yard Devotional.”

Harvey’s debut novel, “The Wilderness,” had been longlisted for the Booker in 2009.

Toward the end of her acceptance speech Tuesday, Harvey said, “I would like to dedicate this prize to everybody who does speak for and not against the Earth.”

John Williams contributed to this report.