British author Samantha Harvey wins Booker with space story

British writer Samantha Harvey has won the 2024 Booker Prize grant with her caller Orbital, the archetypal publication acceptable successful abstraction to triumph the prize.

Orbital contemplates the satellite from a antithetic viewpoint arsenic it follows a squad of astronauts successful the International Space Station.

It's the biggest-selling publication connected the shortlist successful the UK, and has besides outsold the past 3 Booker winners combined, up to the eve of their success.

Harvey, the archetypal pistillate to triumph the grant since 2019, was announced arsenic victor astatine a ceremonial successful London's Old Billingsgate, and volition instrumentality location £50,000.

Chair of the judges, Edmund de Waal, described Orbital arsenic a "book astir a wounded world".

He said the judges each recognised its "beauty and ambition" and praised her "language of lyricism".

Writing it, Harvey said she "thought of it arsenic a abstraction pastoral - a benignant of quality penning astir the quality of space".

The 136-page agelong story, which is Harvey's 5th novel, takes spot implicit a azygous time successful the beingness of six astronauts and cosmonauts.

During those 24 hours they observe 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets implicit their soundless bluish planet, spinning past continents and cycling past seasons, taking successful glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans.

It is the second-shortest publication to triumph the prize, and covers the briefest timeframe of immoderate publication connected the shortlist. The shortest winning caller successful the past of the prize was 1979's Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald, astatine 132 pages.

Harvey antecedently told BBC Radio 4's Front Row programme she wrote Orbital implicit the people of successive lockdowns.

"I was penning astir six radical trapped successful a tin can. It felt similar determination was thing resonant astir that and our acquisition of lockdown, of not being capable to flight each different and besides not being capable to get to different people."

She said she astir gave up connected penning it arsenic she had a "crisis of confidence" and felt arsenic though she was "trespassing", arsenic she had ne'er been successful space.

Harvey antecedently made the longlist for the Booker Prize successful 2009 with her debut novel, The Wilderness.

This year's shortlist had 5 women connected its six-strong shortlist - the largest fig of women represented successful its 55-year history.

The different nominees were:

• James - Percival Everett (US)
• Creation Lake - Rachel Kushner (US)
• Held - Anne Michaels (Canada)
• The Safekeep - Yael van der Wouden (Netherlands)
• Stone Yard Devotion - Charlotte Wood (Australia)

The prestigious prize is unfastened to works of fabrication written successful English by authors anyplace successful the satellite and published successful the UK oregon Ireland.

Previous winning authors see Margaret Atwood, Hilary Mantel, Bernardine Evaristo and Salman Rushdie.