Orbital by Samantha Harvey

The book we introduce today won the Booker Prize in 2024. It’s a short book, with only 136 pages, and although it’s a novel, it doesn’t really tell a story. Instead, it documents the lives of the six astronauts on a space station as they orbit the globe 16 times in the course of 24 hours. The title of the novel is Orbital, by English novelist Samantha Harvey, and it was published in 2023.

The publisher’s description of the book says:
« LIFE ON OUR PLANET AS YOU’VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE
Six astronauts rotate in their spacecraft above the earth. They are there to collect meteorological data and conduct scientific experiments. But mostly they observe. Together they watch our silent blue planet: endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day…… So far from earth, they have never felt more part – or protective – of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity? »