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British writer Samantha Harvey won the prestigious Booker Prize on Tuesday for her short novel following six astronauts as they contemplate Earth from the International Space Station.

Spanning the course of a single day, Harvey’s Orbital tracks astronauts from Japan, Russia, the United States, Britain and Italy as they observe and reflect on their home planet, touching on themes of mourning, desire and the climate crisis.

The Booker, which comes with a $64,000 cash prize, has launched careers and courted controversy since its creation in 1969. Past laureates include Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes and Kazuo Ishiguro.

“I was not expecting that,” Harvey said upon learning of her win, the first by a woman since Atwood was recognised in 2019 for The Testaments alongside Bernardine Evaristo for Girl, Woman, Other.

In her acceptance speech, Harvey dedicated the prize to “everybody who does speak for and not against the Earth; for and not against the dignity of other humans, other life; and all the humans who speak for and call for and work for peace”.

Everyone and no one

Just 136 pages long, Orbital is the second-shortest novel to win the award and the first to be set in space, according to the Booker Prize Foundation.

It is the 49-year-old Harvey’s fifth novel, winning 15 years after her debut book The Wilderness was longlisted for the prize.

Edmund de Waal, chair of the judges, described Orbital as “a book about a wounded world” with “everyone and no one” as the subject.

“With her language of lyricism and acuity Harvey makes our world strange and new for us,” he added.

Harvey described her work as a “space pastoral” in an interview with prize organisers after she was named to the Booker longlist.

“I wanted to write about our human occupation of low earth orbit for the last quarter of a century – not as sci-fi but as realism,” she said.

“Could I evoke the beauty of that vantage point with the care of a nature writer? Could I write about amazement? Could I pull off a sort of space pastoral? These were the challenges I set myself.”

Historic shortlist

A record five women were in the running for the prize, which was announced at a ceremony in London.

The others were Rachel Kushner for Creation Lake, Anne Michaels for Held, Yael van der Wouden for The Safekeep and Charlotte Wood for Stone Yard Devotional.

Percival Everett rounded out the shortlist with his novel James. Everett and Kushner had been considered the two favourites for this year’s prize.

The Booker is seen as a talent spotter of names not necessarily widely known to the general public.

It is open to works of fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK or Ireland between October 1, 2023 and September 30, 2024.