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British author Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for fiction on Tuesday with her book Orbital.
The 136-page novel tells the story of life on the International Space Station for six astronauts over a single day as they observe Earth from afar. From this vantage point, they see the climate crisis firsthand as a category four typhoon hits the Philippines. Harvey describes the crew as “fortune tellers who can see and tell the future but do nothing to change or stop it.”
The 49-year-old was awarded the prize unanimously by a panel of judges, with one praising the novel’s “beauty and ambition.” “It reflects Harvey’s extraordinary intensity of attention to the precious and precarious world we share,” he added.
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Harvey is the first female Booker winner since 2019, and one of the four, out of five, shortlisted female writers this year. The only male finalist, Percival Everett, was considered the favorite to win, with his novel James, which retells the story of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the enslaved Jim.
The crowning of Orbital comes in a year that is on track to become the hottest year on record, The Independent noted.