Orbital
WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024 • A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
**New York Times Book Review Book Club Pick**
**Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show Book Club Pick**
Winner of the 2024 Hawthornden Prize
Shortlisted for the 2024 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction
Shortlisted for the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction
Shortlisted for the 2024 Climate Fiction Prize
One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2024
A singular new novel from Betty Trask Prize-winner Samantha Harvey, Orbital is an eloquent meditation on space and life on our planet through the eyes of six astronauts circling the earth in 24 hours
"Ravishingly beautiful." — Joshua Ferris, New York Times
A slender novel of epic power and the winner of the Booker Prize 2024, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprisingly intimate.
Profound and contemplative, Orbital is a moving elegy to our environment and planet.
- Pages
- 224
- First published
- December 5, 2023
- Language
- English
- Edition
- Ebook
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Reviews
Started May 9, 2026 · Finished May 10, 2026
Started November 20, 2025 · Finished November 21, 2025
This just wasn’t for me.
Started July 30, 2025 · Finished August 2, 2025
Finished January 6, 2025
I really wanted to like this, but it ended up being a disappointing read for me. The book is about astronauts in space, but honestly, it felt like 200 pages of nothing. The plot, if you can call it that, is mostly just endless descriptions of Earth from space and tidbits about the astronauts’ lives. There’s not much of a story to follow — it’s more like a montage of scenes that don’t really go anywhere or serve a larger purpose. Character development is practically nonexistent. We get some background on the astronauts, but it’s surface-level stuff. There’s no real depth or growth, so it was hard to connect with them. The dialogue is sparse, and when it does show up, it doesn’t add much to the narrative. As for where all of this is happening? Well, it’s space, but you don’t feel the vastness or isolation that you might expect. Instead, it’s just more descriptions — and they go on and on. Switching to the audiobook made it even harder to stay engaged. The narrator did her best, but the nonstop descriptions of Earth and lists of the astronauts’ daily activities made it feel monotonous. I found myself zoning out and getting lost in my own thoughts, only to realize the narrator was still droning on about something that didn’t seem to matter. In the end, Orbital felt directionless and pointless. I kept waiting for something to happen, for there to be some kind of climax or resolution, but it never came. I hate to say it, but I wouldn’t recommend this one.
Started December 21, 2024 · Finished December 21, 2024
Finished January 22, 2025