The Booker Prize, a prestigious literary prize which rewards works of fiction in English, was awarded on Tuesday to the British Samantha Harvey for his fifth novel Orbitalat the end of a predominantly female competition.
Orbital was published in March 2024 in French by Flammarion (translated by Of course). It was very well received by international critics.
At the end of a ceremony organized in London, Samantha Harvey won against four women and a man and succeeds the Irish writer Paul Lynch.
Imbued with lyricism, Orbital tells the story of a day in the life of six astronauts, two men and four women, aboard a space station. Constructed in almost meditative fragments, this novel offers a reflection on mourning, desire and the climate crisis. The subject of the book is not so much the discovery of space, but more the place of humans in the universe.
Exploration of the human psyche
Orbital is in line with previous texts by Samantha Harvey, a 49-year-old novelist, which are intended to be explorations of the human psyche. Like his book on memory loss (The lost memoryStock) or on his insomnia (The Shapeless Uneasenot translated).
Launched in 1969, the Booker Prize rewards each year the author of the “best novel written in English”. Compared to the French Goncourt, it contributed to the success of writers like Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood or the Nobel 2024 Han Kang, who won it in 2016 with The vegetarian.
The prize is a reward of 50,000 books (around 60,000 euros) and the promise of international fame synonymous with success in bookstores.
In front of the favorites
Samantha Harvey defied the odds that favored the Americans Rachel Kushner et Percival Everett. The latter, a multi-award winner, was the big favorite of this competition with James. A bit like Camel DaoudGoncourt 2024 prize which was published in 2013 with Meursault, counter-investigation a counterpoint to Albert Camus’ classic, The StrangerPercival Everett revisits in James one of the masterpieces of American literature: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) Mark Twain.
Like his compatriot Rachel Kushner with Creation Lake (2018 Medici Prize with The Mars Club), he misses the famous prize for the second time.
The Canadian Anne Michaelsdubbed by her compatriot Margaret Atwood, also leaves empty-handed despite very good reviews from the press with Held. In this new novel, the novelist explores the themes of her previous stories: history, memory, the effects of trauma and mourning over long periods, through the story of a man who tries to overcome the wound of the Great War.
Disappointment also for the Australian Charlotte Wood who failed to impose himself with Stone Yard Devotional. In this seventh book, the author tells the story of an anonymous woman who, after leaving her job as a conservationist and her husband, retreats to an isolated community of nuns near the town where she grew up. She was the first Australian to reach the final of the award in ten years.
Finally, the youngest in the competition, the Dutch Yael van der Woudenfailed to create a surprise with its historical fresco The Safekeephis highly acclaimed first novel.
