Opinion by Editorial
Set over the course of a day, the novel tracks the lives of six astronauts. Their perspective makes them each come to realise what politicians and citizens fail to see – without Earth and its ambitious humanity, there is little meaning.
Harvey, 49, had set out to write a “space pastoral” but it was during the pandemic that the import of it truly struck her.
Nov 14, 2024 00:24 IST First published on: Nov 14, 2024 at 02:24 IST
The day the Booker Prize is announced, a pall of smog hangs over some of the world’s busiest metropolises. The AQI in Delhi is over 400. In Lahore, it is worse. In other corners of the Earth, similar, albeit less dire, patterns play out even as world leaders convene in Azerbaijan to slug out proportions of climate financing and climate culpability. Amid the haze of breath-choking pollutants, and the complacency of climate naysayers, it is difficult to imagine Earth as a place of immeasurable beauty. British writer Samantha Harvey, this year’s Booker Prize winner for her novel Orbital, did not suffer from a crisis of imagination, however. Her 136-page novel, set over the course of a day, tracks the lives of six astronauts at the International Space Station. Amid the wonder of discovery and the awe of confronting jaw-dropping beauty, each comes to realise what politicians and citizens often fail to see — without Earth and its magnificent, faltering, ambitious humanity, there is little meaning.
At the awards, the odds were in favour of the only man on the shortlist of six — Percival Everett for James — and the win makes Harvey the first woman to get the Booker since 2019. A unanimous choice, the chair of judges, Edmund de Waal, described Orbital, a book that took Harvey 25 years to write, as one “about a wounded world” that “reflects Harvey’s extraordinary intensity of attention to the precious and precarious world we share.” A measure of Orbital’s scope had come early. The slim volume, the second-shortest book to win the Booker, after Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald in 1979, has also been the most commercially successful: It has been the highest-selling book in the shortlist.
One hopes that in its popularity, there is also a strain of recognition of what is at stake. Harvey, 49, had set out to write a “space pastoral” but it was during the pandemic that the import of it truly struck her. As the world battles an urgent climate crisis, could some of her wonder and her anxiety serve as a mirror on the wall?
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
