Samanta Harvey, a British author, became the recipient of the prestigious Booker literary prize for her novel "Orbita." The book tells the story of six astronauts observing Earth from an International Cosmic Station. The events in the book unfold over the course of a single day, spent by the astronauts in the ISS, where they discuss various issues, including climate change.
The Booker prize was established in 1969, and the winner receives 50,000 pounds sterling (64,000 dollars). Harvey became the first female writer to win this award since 2019, when Canadian Margaret Atwood and Brit Bernardine Evaristo won.
According to Harvey, when she was awarded the prize, she did not expect to win. She dedicated her award to "everyone who stands for the good of Earth, for the rights of others, and for life, not against them." Her novel "Orbita," consisting of 136 pages, became the second shortest work to win this award, and the first in which the action takes place in space, according to the "Fond for Booker Prize."
This is already Harvey's fifth book, which has been in existence for 49 years, and the first one she won the prize for after 15 years since her first book "Wild Nature" made it to the Booker longlist. In an interview with the award organizers after the novel fell onto the longlist, Harvey said: "I wanted to write about the human settlement of low orbit Earth in the last quarter of the century, not as a science fiction genre, but as a realistic positioning."
