Event Description

2024 Booker Prize Winner, Orbital with Samantha Harvey

“This is such a beautiful book you have to adjust your readerly heart to take it all in,” wrote author Max Porter about Samantha Harvey’s novel, Orbital, winner of the 2024 Booker Prize. It tells of a team of astronauts in the International Space Station, who collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet and the endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day. They begin to ask, what is life without Earth? What is Earth without humanity?

Samantha’s debut novel, The Wilderness, was awarded the Betty Trask Prize; her other work includes All is Song, Dear Thief and The Western Wind as well as her non-fiction book, The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping. She is a tutor on the MA course in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.

Venue: The Acorn