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By:
CNN
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Translated by: Edona Binaku
- November 14, 2024 22:02
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"Looking at the Earth from space is like a child looking in a mirror and realizing for the first time that the person in the mirror is himself," said Samantha Harvey, winner of the "Booker" prize for the novel "Orbital", for which she researched reading books written by astronauts and watching "live broadcasts" from the space station. "What we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves," she said
British writer Samantha Harvey has won the Booker Prize for literature with her novel Orbital, a short, wondrous story set on the International Space Station that explores the beauty and fragility of Earth.
Harvey was awarded the prize, worth $64, for what she called a "space fable" about six astronauts in orbit, which she began writing while in isolation due to the pandemic. Characters stranded in space experience 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets in one day, in each other's company and mesmerized by the ever-changing sights of our planet.
"Looking at Earth from space is like a child looking in a mirror and realizing for the first time that the person in the mirror is themselves," said Harvey, who researched her novel by reading books written by astronauts and following "live broadcasts" from the space station. "What we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves," she said.
The British author has said that the novel is not exactly about climate change, but implicit in the image of the Earth is the fact of human-caused climate change. She dedicated the award to all those who speak "for and not against the Earth as well as for and not against the dignity of other human beings".
"All people who speak for and seek and work for peace — this award is for you."
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The writer and artist, Edmund de Waal, who chaired the panel of non-artist judges, called "Orbital" a wonderful novel that makes our world seem strange and something new to us.
Gaby Wood, the executive director of the "Booker Prize" Foundation, has emphasized that "in a year of geopolitical crisis, which is expected to be the warmest year in history", the winning book was hopeful, timely and immortal.
Samantha Harvey, who has written four novels and a memoir about insomnia, is the first British writer to win the Booker Prize since 2020. The prize is open to writers writing in English, regardless of nationality, and has a reputation for transforming writers' careers. Some of the past winners were, Ian McEwan, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and Hilary Mantel.
De Waal has revealed that the jury took a day to choose the winner and reached a unanimous conclusion. Harvey beat out five other finalists from countries such as Canada, the United States, Australia and the Netherlands. A total of 156 novels were submitted by publishers to compete for this year's "Booker" prize.
The other finalists were: American writer Rachel Kushner with her spy story Creation Lake, Canadian Anne Michaels' poetic novel Held, Australian Charlotte Wood's saga Stone Yard Devotional and the novel The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden, the first Dutch author to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Harvey is the first writer to win the Booker Prize since 2019, yet she is one of five women to be shortlisted this year, the most in the prize's 55-year history. De Waal has said that issues such as the gender or nationality of the perpetrators were "background noise" that had no bearing on the jury's decision.
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Beyond the boundaries of a book
Established in 1969, the Booker Prize is open to novels originally written in English and published in Great Britain or Ireland.
Last year's winner was Irish writer Paul Lynch for his post-democratic dystopia, Prophet Song. Lynch presented Harvey with the Booker Prize during Tuesday's ceremony - which took place in Old Billingsgate, a large Victorian fish market in central London - warning her that her life would change dramatically because of the fame that brings the price.
