The Booker Prize, a prestigious literary prize which rewards works of fiction in English, was awarded Tuesday evening to the British Samantha Harvey for her fifth novel Orbitalat the end of a predominantly female competition.
She is the first award-winning author since 2019, the year when the Canadian Margaret Atwood and the British Bernardine Evaristo won the tie, and succeeds the Irish writer Paul Lynch.
“I’m completely overwhelmed,” she said on stage when receiving her award at a ceremony in London.
Moved, the 49-year-old novelist also said she wanted to “dedicate this prize to all those who speak out to defend, and not criticize, our planet, those who speak out to defend the dignity of other humans and those who speak out and work for peace.
At a press conference, she reiterated her words assuring that it was impossible for her not to mention “the difficult situation in which the world finds itself”.
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 is in line with Samantha Harvey’s previous texts which are intended to be explorations of the human psyche. Like his book on memory loss (The lost memory) or on his insomnia (The Shapeless Unease).
Beat the odds
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 is awarded each year to the author of the “best novel written in English”. Compared to the French Goncourt, it has contributed to the success of writers like Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood and even the 2024 Nobel Han Kang, who won it in 2016 with The vegetarian.
The prize is a reward of 50,000 books (more than 88,000 Canadian dollars) 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, several times awarded, was the big favorite of this competition with James.
A bit like Kamel Daoud, Prix Goncourt 2024 who published in 2013 with Meursault, counter-investigation a counterpoint to Albert Camus’ classic, The StrangerEverett revisits with James one of the masterpieces of American literature: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) the Mark Twain.
This time, the narration is from the point of view of Jim, a slave.
Like her compatriot Rachel Kushner with Creation Lake (Medici Prize 2018 with The Mars Club), he escaped the famous prize for the second time.
The Canadian Anne Michaels, dubbed 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 win 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 Dutchwoman Yael van der Wouden, did not manage to create a surprise with her historic fresco The Safekeephis highly acclaimed first novel.
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