Orbital

Our unanimity about Orbital recognises its beauty and ambition . It reflects Harvey’s extraordinary intensity of attention to the precious and precarious world we share

Our unanimity about Orbital recognises its beauty and ambition . It reflects Harvey’s extraordinary intensity of attention to the precious and precarious world we share

In this slender novel, Harvey seems to have encompassed all of humanity… It is an extraordinary achievement

Gorgeously poetic… I was knocked out. It’s also surprisingly funny… One of the most original novels I’ve read this year

Harvey beautifully evokes the wonder and fragility of our planet and its inhabitants. An uplifting book, in every sense

In Samantha Harvey’s Orbital , six astronauts circle the world 16 times. Gliding through Harvey’s technicolour prose is an equally frictionless experience

Orbital is the rarest of things , a book that satisfies both my lifelong obsession with space travel and my hunger for sentences and paragraphs that demand to be read and reread… My goodness this novel is beautiful

Eerily beautiful

One of our most consistently surprising novelists rips up the rulebook again… A boldly imaginative meditation on time and the nature of existence

Orbital is entirely original, a serenely beautiful and intelligent creation

This genius novel… Asks big questions about humanity and the fragility of our lives… A short yet exquisite read

Samantha Harvey is the author of the novels Orbital , The Wilderness , All is Song , Dear Thief and The Western Wind and a work of non-fiction, The Shapeless Unease : A Year of Not Sleeping . Orbital was the winner of the Booker Prize 2024, and her other work has been shortlisted for the James Tait Black Award, the Women's Prize, the Guardian First Book Award and the Walter Scott Prize. The Wilderness was awarded the Betty Trask Prize. She is a tutor on the MA course in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.