Orbital by Samantha Hayes ( not a book review)

 

2019 saw two women authors winning the Booker Prize for Fiction – Margaret Atwood for "The Testaments" and Bernardine Evaristo for “Girls, Woman, Other.”  In 2009, Hilary Mantel won the Prize for “Wolf Hall”. Samantha Harvey’s first novel “The Wilderness” appeared in the Booker Prize Long-list in the year 2009. 

In 2024, she won the Prize for her novel “Orbital”. This year, out of the six short-listed authors, five are women. So far, 19 women have won the Booker Prize since its inception. Orbital is about six astronauts orbiting the Earth. Each chapter of the novel covers a single 90-minute orbit around Earth, with 16 orbits in the 24 hours.The novel explores profound themes such as mourning, desire, and the climate crisis.