The Booker Prize, a prestigious literary prize which rewards works of fiction in English, was awarded on Tuesday to the British Samantha Harvey for her fifth novel “Orbital”. The competition was predominantly female.
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At the end of a ceremony organized in London, Ms. Harvey won against four women and one man. She 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.
“Orbital” follows in the tradition of 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 Memory”, Stock) or on his insomnia (“The Shapeless Unease”, untranslated).
Translated into French
This work was published in March 2024 in French by Flammarion. It was very well received by international critics.
Launched in 1969, the Booker Prize rewards the author of the “best novel written in English” each year. Compared to the French Goncourt, it has contributed to the success of writers like Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood and Han Kang, Nobel Prize winner in 2024 who won it in 2016 with “The Vegetarian”.
The prize is a reward of 50,000 pounds (56,000 francs) and the promise of international fame synonymous with success in bookstores.
Samantha Harvey defied the odds which favored Americans Rachel Kushner and Percival Everett. The latter, a multi-award winner, was the big favorite in this competition with “James”.
The Canadian Anne Michaels, dubbed by her compatriot Margaret Atwood, also leaves empty-handed despite very good reviews from the press with “Held”. Disappointment also for the Australian Charlotte Wood who failed to win with “Stone Yard Devotional”.
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