Who wrote Orbital, the 2024 Booker Prize winner?

Samantha Harvey wrote Orbital, the novel that won the 2024 Booker Prize. The British author’s compact, lyrical book follows six astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station during a single day in orbit.

Orbital is notable for making outer space the setting of a Booker-winning novel without treating itself as conventional science fiction. Harvey presents the astronauts’ observations of Earth—its oceans, weather, cities and fragile beauty—alongside loneliness, bereavement, mission fatigue and questions about humanity’s place on the planet.

The novel covers 24 hours, during which the crew see 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets. At 136 pages, it was the shortest book on the 2024 shortlist and became the second-shortest Booker winner, after Penelope Fitzgerald’s 1979 winner Offshore. Harvey had previously been longlisted for The Wilderness in 2009.

The shortlist included Charlotte Wood, Anne Michaels and Rachel Kushner, which explains the likely confusion in this quiz. They were shortlisted authors, not the winner. Harvey received the £50,000 prize at the November 2024 ceremony in London.