On Tuesday, 12 November, the Booker Prize returned to Old Billingsgate in London, a converted Victorian market on the banks of the Thames, for this year’s ceremony. The attendees, a mix of authors, publishers, booksellers, actors, artists, influencers and more, were greeted by a 2.3 metre tall Booker Prize trophy, Iris, who stood at the heart of the venue, a larger-than-life recreation of Jan Pieńkowski’s original statuette, which was awarded at the inaugural prize ceremony in 1969 to author P.H. Newby – and revived two years ago. 

The evening was a celebration of this year’s six shortlisted books – James, Orbital, Stone Yard Devotional, The Safekeep, Held, and Creation Lake – brought to life through a series of speeches, interviews and short films. Moments before the clock struck ten, Chair of judges Edmund de Waal revealed this year’s winner. 

‘This is about writing fiction, not finding answers, not solving problems,’ said de Waal, an internationally acclaimed artist and writer, adding that language in its beauty ‘reflects an intensity of attention to lives; precious, precarious lives’. With that, he announced Orbital by Samantha Harvey as the Booker Prize 2024 winner. Harvey, who takes home £50,000 in prize money, was presented with her trophy by last year’s winner, Paul Lynch.

Orbital, which is Harvey’s fifth novel and sixth book, unfolds over a single day in the life of six astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station. It invites readers to marvel at Earth’s splendour, whilst reflecting on the individual and collective value of every human life. It is also the first Booker Prize-winning book set in space. 

In her acceptance speech, Harvey began by charming the audience with a touch of humour: ‘I was told we weren’t allowed to swear in our speech, so there goes mine’. She went on to reflect on the imperfections of our world, referencing Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, and dedicated her prize to everybody who ‘speaks 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 peace’. 

Following the announcement, the literary world, bloggers and influencers were quick to celebrate Harvey’s win. On Instagram, bookstagrammer Darryl Suite exclaimed, ‘Orbital was my fave out of all 13. I am thrilled’. Book blogger Eric Karl Anderson, who posts as Lonesomereader and attended the ceremony, said ‘I got totally swept up in the reflective poetic style of Orbital,’ while Bernie Lombardi, also in attendance, said they were not typically drawn to space-related fiction but when they finally picked the novel up, they were ‘immediately stunned’, adding ‘this is a message that resonates deeply with pressing issues of our time’. 

On X, @pureheroinetweets praised Harvey’s ability to oscillate ‘between the magnificent and inconsequent, the grotesque and the beautiful, the preventable and inevitable,’ calling it a ‘supremely stylish novel’. 

While Harvey has maintained that her novel was never intended to be overtly political – ‘I didn’t really want the book to be a political statement,’ she told the New Statesman in an interview the day after her win – it’s hard to deny its timely resonance. Throughout Orbital, Harvey weaves several subtle yet pointed references to climate change: ‘Every swirling neon or red algal bloom in the polluted, warming, overfished Atlantic is crafted in large part by the hand of politics and human choices,’ she writes.

Most of the novel was written in lockdown, when Harvey watched feeds directly from the International Space Station on her laptop, day in, day out. It’s this perspective, from high above Earth that Harvey absorbed into Orbital. ‘Could I evoke the beauty of that vantage point with the care of a nature writer?’ she asked the Booker Prizes, in an interview upon being longlisted. ‘Could I pull off a sort of space pastoral?’

It seems she could. In a year marked by heightened awareness of our planet’s fragility, and a week in which COP29 reports confirmed that current policies could lead to a 2.7°C rise in global temperatures, there has never been a clearer rallying cry to protect Earth.

As reported by The Hindu’s Frontline, Harvey said she was ‘overwhelmed’ but remained down-to-earth about spending her prize money. She said she would disburse ‘some of it on tax. I want to buy a new bike. And then the rest—I want to go to Japan.’