Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, a novel set on the International Space Station, is the winner of the Booker Prize 2024. The announcement was made at Old Billingsgate in London on November 12.

It’s the second consecutive year a work of genre interest has won the award. Paul Lynch’s book Prophet Song, set in a near future Ireland, received the Booker in 2023.

The Booker Prize is open to works of long-form fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland.

Harvey’s Orbital focuses on six astronauts in the International Space Station.

They are there to do vital work, but slowly they begin to wonder: what is life without Earth? What is Earth without humanity?

Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents, and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.

Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction.

The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part – or protective – of it.

Learn more about Harvey and her novel at the Booker Prize website: “Everything you need to know about Orbital by Samantha Harvey, winner of the Booker Prize 2024”.

Samantha Harvey’s acceptance speech can be viewed on YouTube.

The Booker judging panel is chaired by artist and author Edmund de Waal, joined by award-winning novelist Sara Collins; Fiction Editor of the Guardian, Justine Jordan; world-renowned writer and professor Yiyun Li; and musician, composer and producer Nitin Sawhney.

The shortlisted authors each receive £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book. The winning author receives £50,000.