Orbital
A slender novel of epic power and the winner of the Booker Prize 2024, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprisingly intimate.
Themes & atmosphere
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What you might want to know about Orbital
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Six astronauts circle the planet on the International Space Station for a single day. As they pass over storms and continents, they think about home, the work, and the small Earth below them.
Yes. Orbital won the 2024 Booker Prize. It is the shortest novel to win the Booker since Penelope Fitzgerald's Offshore in 1979. Samantha Harvey is also the author of The Western Wind and Dear Thief.
Orbital is short, around 200 pages, with prose that is meditative and often lyrical. The novel takes place over 16 orbits of the International Space Station in a single day. Most readers find it more atmospheric than plot-driven.
Orbital was written by Samantha Harvey, published in 2023 by Penguin Random House.
Orbital is 144 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Orbital takes most readers 2 to 3 hours to finish.
Orbital is a standalone novel by Samantha Harvey, not part of a series.
Orbital is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.