Orbital
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3.6 • 75 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF 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 and the winner of the Booker Prize 2024, 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.
Customer Reviews
Orbital
A love story to planet Earth, albeit without a traditional through line story.
Not my sort
The book is poetic. There are many deeply moving sections. There is no argument about that. Nearly everyone else in my book club thought it magnificent. I could not read the physical book though I tried several times, but I did make it all the way through this audio version, thanks, I think, to the brilliance of the narrator. I’m not sure why it was awarded the Booker prize. It is not a novel. There is no plot. It is certainly not science fiction. It is a lovely, dreamy narration. Had I not been crocheting a blanket, I could not, even with the wonderful narrator, have made it to the end.
Not for me
I’ve been listening to the audiobook for three days and nothing has happened some girl rambling about her philosophical thoughts endlessly. My husband would love this book. His cup of tea for sure but I crave action.