British author Samantha Harvey has become the first woman since 2019 to win the Booker Prize.
His book Orbital, about astronauts looking towards Earth, was named winner of the £50,000 prize and trophy at a ceremony held at Old Billingsgate in the City of London.
Harvey, who was nominated for the prestigious literary prize in 2009 for her debut novel The Wilderness, is the 19th woman to win since the first prize in 1969. There have been 36 male winners.
The Queen was one of the first to congratulate the author, after meeting her today, saying the novel was “brilliant”.
Harvey, from Bath, said he had “no idea how to cope” with his 2024 Booker Prize win as he took to the stage after his win.
She said she was “overwhelmed, indirectly” when Irish author Paul Lynch, a friend of hers, won last year, and “can’t believe” she’s in the same position.
She said, ‘God, I have no idea how to deal with this. I didn’t expect it. “I’m completely overwhelmed.”
Samantha Harvey poses with the trophy after winning the Booker Prize
Samantha Harvey reacts after winning the Booker Prize at Old Billingsgate in the City of London
Samantha Harvey’s book Orbital, about astronauts looking towards Earth, was named winner of the £50,000 prize and trophy at a ceremony held at Old Billingsgate in the City of London.
Harvey, who was nominated for the prestigious literary award in 2009 for her debut novel The Wilderness, is the 19th woman to win since the first prize in 1969. Pictured: Speaking to Queen Camilla today
Harvey dedicated the award to “all those who speak for and not against the earth, for and not against the dignity of other human beings, other lives and all people who speak, ask and work for peace.” .
‘I suppose it’s fair to say that no Booker speech has ever been given in a perfect world. It’s hard not to recognize the imperfections of the world we live in today.
Five years ago, the gong went to two women, British author Bernardine Evaristo for Girl, Woman, Other and Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood for The Handmaid’s Tale sequel, The Testaments.
The last time a British author won it was when Glasgow-born Douglas Stuart was named winner of the 2020 Booker Prize for Shuggie Bain.
Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, said: “Orbital wins the prize in a year of geopolitical crisis, which is likely to be the warmest year on record.”
“A book about a planet ‘formed by the incredible force of human need,’ about a ‘limitless place’ with no wall or barrier visible from space, with all the politics ‘an assault on its gentleness,’ is hopeful, timely, and eternal.’
This year, a record number of women were shortlisted for the Booker – five nominees in total.
Orbital, the best-selling book on the shortlist, with 29,000 copies sold in the UK this year, is also the second shortest Booker winner, just behind Penelope Fitzgerald’s Offshore, which won the 1979 prize.
It also won the 2024 InWords Literary Prize and the 2024 Hawthornden Prize for Literature.
Samantha Harvey gives a speech after winning the 2024 Booker Prize
Harvey’s novel takes place over a 24-hour period, with 16 orbits around the Earth, and addresses the death of a loved one, the arrival of a typhoon, and the fragility of human life.
Yael van der Wouden, Rachel Kushner, Anne Michaels, Queen Camilla, Charlotte Wood, Percival Everett and Samantha Harvey during a reception for the Booker Prize Foundation at Clarence House
Artist and jury president Edmund de Waal was asked about the optics if the only man on the list, Percival Everett, won for James, a powerful version of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, from the perspective of the enslaved Jim.
De Waal dismissed the suggestion, saying there was “no doubt that anyone could have won this, regardless of their background, their gender, their ethnicity, whatever, absolutely anyone.”
“There was absolutely no question of checking boxes or agendas or anything else in the room,” he added.
“It was simply a novel.”
Harvey’s novel takes place over a 24-hour period, following six astronauts and cosmonauts on the International Space Station during 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets.
It touches on the death of a loved one, the approach of a typhoon and the fragility of human life.
Harvey, a professor of creative writing at Bath Spa University, previously told the BBC that she wrote the book between successive lockdowns.
She told Radio 4’s Front Row: “I was writing about six people trapped in a can. I felt there was something resonant about that and our experience of lockdown, of not being able to escape from each other and also not being able to reach other people.’
Mr de Waal said: “As judges, we were determined to find a book that moved us, a book that had breadth and resonance, that we are compelled to share.”
‘We wanted everything. Orbital is our book.
Shortlisted books on display during a Booker Prize Foundation reception at Clarence House
‘Samantha Harvey has written a novel driven by the beauty of 16 Sunrises and 16 Sunsets.
‘Everyone and no one is the theme as six astronauts on the International Space Station circle the Earth watching the passage of time across the fragility of borders and time zones.
‘With his language of lyricism and wit, Harvey makes our world strange and new to us.
‘All year we have celebrated fiction that lives in ideas instead of declaiming about themes, not finding answers but changing the question of what we wanted to explore.
‘Our unanimity about Orbital recognizes its beauty and ambition.
“It reflects Harvey’s extraordinary intensity of attention to the precious, precarious world we share.”
This year’s judges all agreed on the choice and included novelist Sara Collins, Guardian fiction editor Justine Jordan, Chinese professor and A Thousand Years Of Good Prayers writer Yiyun Li and musician, composer and producer Nitin Sawhney, who has collaborated with Sir Paul McCartney and won a lifetime achievement gong from Ivor Novello.
Earlier on Tuesday, the shortlisted authors – Yael van der Wouden, Rachel Kushner, Anne Michaels, Charlotte Wood, Everett and Harvey – attended a reception with the Queen, her first public engagement since she fell ill with a chest infection.
Last year’s winner was Irish author Paul Lynch with his dystopian novel Prophet Song.
This is breaking news, there will be more to follow.