LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024
Winner of the 2024 Hawthornden Prize 
Shortlisted for the 2024 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction
Shortlisted for the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction
A singular new novel from Betty Trask Prize-winner Samantha Harvey, Orbital is an eloquent meditation on space and life on our planet through the eyes of six astronauts circling the earth in 24 hours
"Ravishingly beautiful." -- Joshua Ferris, New York Times
A slender novel of epic power, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts--from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan--have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprisingly intimate. 
Profound and contemplative, Orbital is a moving elegy to our environment and planet.


Author: Samantha Harvey
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Published: 12/05/2023
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.55lbs
Size: 7.40h x 4.90w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9780802161543


Review Citation(s): 
Library Journal Prepub Alert 07/01/2023 pg. 5
Publishers Weekly 09/18/2023
Kirkus Reviews 10/15/2023
Booklist 10/15/2023 pg. 23
Library Journal 11/01/2023 pg. 54
Shelf Awareness 12/08/2023
About the Author
Samantha Harvey is the author of five novels, Orbital, The Western Wind,  Dear Thief, All Is Song, and The Wilderness, which won the Betty Trask Prize, and one work of nonfiction, The Shapeless Unease. Her books have been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Guardian First Book Award, and the James Tait Black Prize, as well as longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Baileys Women's Prize. She lives in Bath, UK, and teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University.