Samantha Harvey the Booker Prize winner in 2024

Dr Elangbam Hemanta Singh *

Samantha Harvey, a British novelist and short story writer who was awarded the Booker Prize in 2024 for her 2023 novel, Orbital. All of this has made for conventional narrative, and so this work fights against it, pursuing a reflective, meditative, almost metonymic exploration of life aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

It welcomes readers into the lives of six astronauts, whose mission isn’t centered in familiar, plot-driven ways, but instead is an in-depth tour of human emotion, the wonders of Earth seen from sub-orbital heights, and the strain between personal lives and their shared mission in space.

This essay will engage in close-reading and critical analysis to investigate the themes, literary techniques, and reception of the novel Orbital, utilizing reviews and literary analysis to articulate the importance of the work in the novel landscape.

Before this review let us know how Harvey starts her journey as a writer and what is the Booker Prize all about? Let me, however, share a few Research Topics - the young and promising scholars could explore them - here are
(1) Existentialism and the Human Condition in Orbital,
(2) The Role of Memory and Trauma in The Wilderness and The Western Wind,
(3) The Representation of Space and Place in Contemporary English Literature: A Study of Orbital and The Western Wind,
(4) Exploring Female Identity and Autonomy in Samantha Harvey’s The Wilderness and Mahesh Dattani’s Tara, (
5) The Interplay of History, Memory, and Faith in The Western Wind and The Wilderness.

Born in Kent, England in 1975, Harvey initially set out on a path of academic achievement before branching out into a career in writing, fostering her interest in storytelling from a young age. She graduated with a Master’s in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, which would set her on the path toward writing.

She also got a postgraduate degree in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh that showed her love of intelligent things and was mirrored in her deep works that mixed intricate psychological depth with complex reflections on memory and aging and personal identity.

As a child, Harvey read a lot and that habit continued into her writing career. And also, she loved to tell stories, reading avidly and writing her own story. These habits of reading and writing were formative for her imagination and ambitions as a writer.

Not much is publicly known about Harvey’s early academic experiences, but her interest in literature appears to have continued throughout her education, ultimately leading her to begin studying English literature at the University of Edinburgh. This academic exploration deepened her understanding of narrative structure and literary themes, fuelling her aspiration to become a writer.

After finishing studies, Harvey started her literary career as a fictional writer, and as with most people in the art movement, it was not an instantaneous affair, as she spent several years practicing with her writing and dabbling in various literary forms.

She worked at The Observer as a staff writer and sub-editor, contributing pieces to several other publications, including The Guardian and Granta, before gamering experience in the literary worlds during her employment years.

At this period, she also worked with short fiction to develop her voice and narrative techniques before moving on to longer works and writing full time. Her experience in the editorial world influenced her work as a novelist in respect to her mastery of language and an eye for detail.

The Booker Prize, also known as the Man Booker Prize, when it had sponsorship from the Man Group financial services company, is perhaps the most prestigious of all literary awards in the English-speaking world. It is awarded each year for the best original novel written in English in the given year.

The principal object and purpose of the prize is to recognise and reward the best novel of the year, concentrating on fiction that is challenging, fresh, and stimulating. First of all, the work should have been originally written in English and published in the UK or Ireland in the given year. There are no restrictions as to nationality of the authors, although their work should be originally published in English.

The winner is awarded a cash prize, which while it has fluctuated throughout the years, stands at £50,000 today, in 2024, allowing for him or her to become generally known internationally and to enjoy an acclaimed success.

Harvey’s debut work, The Wilderness (2009), tells the story of Jake Jameson - a man suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. She delves into memory - a theme that revolves around the crumbling self and identity, the crumbling journey Jake takes through this dismemberment of memory becomes a severe meditation on the delicacy of existence. The novel was well received for its emotional depth and won the Betty Trask Prize in 2009.

Some of her works are The Driftwood Beach (1982), Amaryllis Dreaming (1985), All Is Song (2012), Dear Thief (2014), The Western Wind (2018), The Shapeless Unease (2020).

In Orbital, the sense of isolation felt by the six astronauts and cosmonauts from Japan. USA, Britain, Italy and Russia - four men and two women - becomes a microcosm for larger human concerns with alienation and existential doubt.

This team is “a choreography of movements and functions,” each person bringing something different to the crew - Anton the spaceship’s heart, Pietro its mind, Roman its hands, Shaun its soul, Chie its conscience and Neil its breath. They have been allotted a series of experiments to evaluate the impact of space journey on various natural processes and bodily functions during the trip.

Confined in a space in orbit and separated from the world they once knew, astronauts are forced to confront their inner worlds. These characters experience a deep disconnect from Earth, but the novel addresses its emotional struggles when technological and environmental transgressions are upon them.

This kind of alienation is thus characterized by their physical distance as well as the novel’s structure, which frequently eschews action in favour of the philosophic underpinning of human actions. In short, one could say, it is characterized by sparse reflective prose, unconcerned with action or ordinary plot development.

Rather, it draws narrative strength from this internal exploration of the lived lives of its characters as they try to cope with the psychological demands that space travel provides.

Navigating the psychological fallout of space travel, the astronauts - in the course of this grand technological undertaking- grapple with grief, alienation, illness, and shifting relationships back on Earth. The novel’s nonlinear structure reflects the disorientation and fragmentation experienced by the characters, which parallels their physical detachment from the Earth.

Reflection on the Anthropocene, the current geological epoch said to be when human activity has had the greatest impact on the climate and ecology, is another theme of Orbital. The astronauts saw the Earth as a delicate, interconnected system in orbit, devoid of separate states, borders, or time zones.

The story challenges humanity’s propensity to partition the world into regions and wars by using space as a point of view. As they observe a “rolling indivisible globe,” the astronauts’ viewpoint questions conventional ideas of division and separation.

In this way, the book defies the usual gloomy accounts of environmental crises and also addresses more general issues of hope, humanity, and the Anthropocene. As a result, the book offers a reflection on what it means to be human in a world that is both enormous and incredibly small - a contrast that is especially relevant when discussing space travel.

Beyond the cramped surroundings of the astronauts, Harvey’s assessment of solitude touches on more significant existential issues of humanity’s role in the cosmos.

The astronauts see sixteen sunrises and sunsets during their orbit around the planet, which serves as a potent metaphor for the cyclical nature of life and death as “an epic poem of flowing verses.” The astronauts’ views on their own personal challenges are all the more painful because of this recurrent observation of time passing, which highlights the frailty of human existence.

In Orbital, Samantha Harvey intricately blends science fiction with profound philosophical questions about memory, identity, and the human condition. Her lyrical prose and thought-provoking narrative will resonate with readers seeking an intellectually stimulating and emotionally nuanced exploration of existence in a near-future world. One must read for speculative fiction fans.