The 2024 Booker Prize is Awarded to Orbital by Samantha Harvey

The 2024 Booker Prize has been awarded to Samantha Harvey for her novel Orbital.

The prize committee writes that "Harvey’s novel takes place over a single day in the life of six astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station. Compact yet beautifully expansive, Orbital invites us to observe Earth’s splendour, whilst reflecting on the individual and collective value of every human life."

Samantha Harvey is the first British author to win the Booker since 2019, when Bernardino Evaristo was a co-winner for her novel Girl, Woman, Other (the other winner was Margaret Atwood for The Testaments, a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale).

The Booker Prize was formerly only open to English language writers from the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and the Commonwealth countries. In 2014, the prize became open to anyone writing in English, regardless of their home country. Since then, there have been only two British authors who have won the prize (including Samantha Harvey).