Samantha Harvey

orbital

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‘A small miracle of a book’ – Nathan Flier

The Shapeless Unease

The Western Wind

Dear Thief

All is Song

The Wilderness

Orbital

It's here! Browse the 2024 Penguin Christmas gift guide

Our unanimity about Orbital recognises its beauty and ambition. It reflects Harvey’s extraordinary intensity of attention to the precious and precarious world we share

Edmund de Waal, Chair of the 2024 Booker Prize judges

In this slender novel, Harvey seems to have encompassed all of humanity… It is an extraordinary achievement

Gorgeously poetic… I was knocked out. It’s also surprisingly funny… One of the most original novels I’ve read this year

Harvey beautifully evokes the wonder and fragility of our planet and its inhabitants. An uplifting book, in every sense

In Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, six astronauts circle the world 16 times. Gliding through Harvey’s technicolour prose is an equally frictionless experience

Orbital is the rarest of things, a book that satisfies both my lifelong obsession with space travel and my hunger for sentences and paragraphs that demand to be read and reread… My goodness this novel is beautiful

One of our most consistently surprising novelists rips up the rulebook again… A boldly imaginative meditation on time and the nature of existence

Orbital is entirely original, a serenely beautiful and intelligent creation

This genius novel… Asks big questions about humanity and the fragility of our lives… A short yet exquisite read

In outer space the author hits on the pure swirlingness that her previous works seem to aspire to. The characters’ thoughts mix and flow with the colours and light… Sumptuously written

A slender, gleaming novel… Weaving a line of philosophical enquiry through her luminous prose has become something of a trademark for Samantha Harvey

One of the most original novels I’ve read in a long time. It’s bold, it’s scintillating and it’s gloriously imaginative… [it] puts humanity into a brave new perspective

A slim, profound study of intimate human fears set against epic vistas of swirling weather patterns and rolling continents

Samantha Harvey is one of Britain’s most fascinating writers and this novel is characterized by her sense of awe

Stunning… The beauty of the prose engages the reader fully… An uplifting book

In contrast to the bleak apocalyptic tone of much contemporary climate fiction, Orbital’s luminous descriptions remind us of the beauty at stake when humanity plays fast and loose with our single, and singular, blue marble

Harvey’s impressively researched, poetic novel carries a powerful ecological message. Above all, thought, it’s a brilliantly imaginative account of life with the vastness of the cosmos just outside your window

Mesmerising… Harvey blends prose of poetic beauty with a clarion call to take responsibility for where we live… Orbital deserves to propel Harvey to far greater recognition

A gorgeous novel… An intensely charged reading experience, sustained by the sensory thrill of Harvey’s imaginative attention to detail

I loved this short novel, which explores the inner-lives of astronauts as they orbit a troubled, unstable planet. There’s little in the way of plot but the writing is so exquisite, the sense of awe and beauty so well-achieved that I tore through it in a single sitting

Orbital is as beautiful as it is profound

Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven

One of the most beautiful novels I have read in a very long time

This is such a beautiful book you have to adjust your readerly heart to take it all in... It is an awe-inspiring and humbling love letter to Earth and those who reckon with the gift of it

Six astronauts on a space station are working, sleeping, and watching the world go by. They think about typhoons, algal blooms, seascapes, cities at night, Velázquez, frog calls, fried eggs, family. Orbital is a lush description of the gorgeous earth, and a broad-minded, level-headed, affectionate take on what goes on down here

Orbital is a magnificent, thunderous work and yet so brief, so fleeting. It is an elegy to planet Earth in all its splendour and fragility. Exquisitely well-written, it confirms Samantha Harvey as a singular talent

Nathan Filer, author of The Shock of the Fall

Orbital is one of the most beautiful and poignant novels I have read this year… There is something profoundly compelling about this short novel

A gorgeous song of praise from on high, a hymn sung in starlight to celebrate mankind's courage and endeavour

Otherworldly… Gorgeously written and offers a intriguing perspective on the human race’s treatment of our planet

Orbital could be her best yet… It is sensual and poetic and concerned with the granular experiences of the individual

An exquisite little novel... Weaves lyrically between the minds of the characters and the aesthetics of Earth as seen from above

Compelling... Orbital is a hopeful book and it studies people who act on their hope. It’s an Anthropocene book resistant to doom

A fascinating glimpse inside a home so few will ever see. Her lyrical prose skillfully contrasts the technicalities of space travel with the ever-present inspiration of the gleaming planet below... This slim novel is so much more than the sum of its parts. Luminous and profound, Orbital is hard to put down and even harder to forget

Lovely lyrical prose... This gorgeous meditation leaves readers feeling as if they’re floating in the same 'dark unswimmable sea'

Its meditative loveliness is a tonic [...] looking back with love and longing at faraway Earth.

A slim but beautifully rich novel. You could read it over and over, just as watching a sunrise never gets dull… its prose is both scientifically precise and transcendent

Orbital is as accessible and educational as the best of popular science. It’s a feat almost as astonishing as the existence of the ISS

Orbital meditates on the glorious fragility of human life and culture… a gentle and warm exploration of what it means to be human in an environment in which human beings were not designed to live

A beautiful, powerful and utterly original work of fiction

[Obital] skilfully and ambitiously exposes is the human cost of space flight set against the urgency of the climate crisis

Orbital…is a delight… [it has] some of the most beautiful prose I’ve read this year

This luminous novel… [explores] the joys and sorrows of being human, and [is] a love letter to our unique planet

A beautiful, sublimely written, hopeful book

A gorgeous 160-page novel, this year’s Booker Prize winner would be right at home in any stocking

Startling, compelling, humane, this is my book of the year

Samantha Harvey’s gorgeously wrought Orbital, a new and profound perspective on the Earth in all its beauty and fragility and a vital read in an age of environmental degradation and territorial violence

I admire Orbital even more than the rest of Harvey's work... I don't think I've read anything else with such love for its characters and such clarity about the state of the planet, and I was deeply grateful for the novel's refusal of despair or cynicism

Indubitably intelligent, Harvey's prose is also quite simply ravishing ... This generation's Virginia Woolf

I loved reading it before I fell asleep every night - it seemed to give my sleep resonance and poetry. What a beautiful book

Tessa Hadley, praise for THE SHAPELESS UNEASE

[A] remarkable book ... Harvey writes with hypnotic power and poetic precision about - well, about everything

Mail on Sunday, praise for THE SHAPELESS UNEASE

Beautifully rendered, deeply affecting, thoroughly thoughtful

New York Times, praise for THE WESTERN WIND

**WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024** 
 
'A slim, profound study of intimate human fears set against epic vistas' 
GUARDIAN 
 
'Stunning... An uplifting book' 
SUNDAY TIMES 
 
Life on our planet as you've never seen it before 
 
A team of astronauts in the International Space Station 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, 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. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?

Samantha Harvey is the author of the novels Orbital, The Wilderness, All is Song, Dear Thief and The Western Wind and a work of non-fiction, The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping. Orbital was the winner of the Booker Prize 2024, and her other work has been shortlisted for the James Tait Black Award, the Women's Prize, the Guardian First Book Award and the Walter Scott Prize. The Wilderness was awarded the Betty Trask Prize. She is a tutor on the MA course in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.

**WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024** 
**THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER** 
 
'A slim, profound study of intimate human fears set against epic vistas' 
GUARDIAN 
 
'Stunning... An uplifting book' 
SUNDAY TIMES 
 
Life on our planet as you've never seen it before 
 
A team of astronauts in the International Space Station 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, 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. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity? 
 
'Our unanimity about Orbital recognises its beauty and ambition. It reflects Harvey’s extraordinary intensity of attention to the precious and precarious world we share' Edmund de Waal, Chair of the 2024 Booker Prize judges 
 
*A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE GUARDIAN, SUNDAY TIMES, FINANCIAL TIMES, NEW STATESMAN, SPECTATOR, DAILY MAIL AND MAIL ON SUNDAY*

Orbital

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Samantha Harvey

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