Samantha Harvey very nearly gave up on her novel Orbital, which has just won the Booker prize. Set on the International Space Station (ISS) 400km from Earth, Orbital follows the day-to-day lives of four astronauts and two cosmonauts as they hurtle through the universe. She was a few thousand words in and suddenly lost her nerve. She felt she was trespassing in space. "I am so spectacularly not an astronaut," she laughs, when we meet for coffee the morning after the Booker ceremony. "I'm so unadventurous, so unaudacious, so impractical, cowardly, anxious. I would be terrible." After a few months of dabbling with other ideas, she opened the abandoned document on her computer by mistake. When she read it she found it had an integrity and pulse that drew her more than any of the other projects she was working on. "I thought, I shouldn't be afraid of this. If I can do it in a way that's different to the way astronauts write about their time in space, then maybe there's something here." So she climbed back in and achieved lift-off.
Described as both "this generation's Virginia Woolf" and "a kind of Melville of the skies", Harvey was the only British author on this year's Booker shortlist. Orbital, her fifth novel, is a beautiful, powerful and utterly original work of fiction.
It takes place over one day, but time is different in space, where "the whipcrack of morning arrives every ninety minutes". Each of the 16 chapters records a single orbit of Earth. Mundane tasks are set against the munificence of the universe. One of the toilets is always blocked. A super-typhoon is gathering over the Philippines. Each of the characters are given only slivers of backstory: Chie's mother has died; Anton has fallen out of love with his wife; Shaun longs for his.
Denne historien er fra November 22, 2024-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Denne historien er fra November 22, 2024-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Friendship interrupted
They were best mates. Then one had a baby, while the other struggled to conceive. They share their brutally honest takes on what happens when motherhood affects friendship
KERNELS OF HOPE
During the siege of Leningrad, botanists in charge of an irreplaceable seed collection, the first of its kind, had to protect it from fire, rodents-and hunger
A new horizon' The inverse link between cancer and dementia
Scientists have long been aware of a curious connection between these common and feared diseases. At last, a clearer picture is emerging
Across the universe
Samantha Harvey won the Booker prize with a novel set in space. Yet, she says, Orbital is actually 'a celebration of Earth's beauty with a pang of loss'
Frank Auerbach 1931 -2024
Saved from the Holocaust, this artist captured the devastation of postwar Britain as ifits wounds were his own but he ultimately found salvation in painting
Seven lessons I've learned after 28 years as economics editor
Margaret Thatcher was Britain's prime minister and Neil Kinnock was leader of the Labour party.
Droughtstricken dam leaves economies powerless
A ll is not well with the waters of Lake Kariba, the world's human-made lake largest A punishing drought has drained the huge reservoir close to record lows, raising the prospect that the Kariba Dam, which powers the economies of Zambia and Zimbabwe, may have to shut down for the first time in its 65-year history.
Let this be the end of these excruciating celebrity endorsements
I wish celebrities would learn the art of the French exit. But they can't, which is why Eva Longoria has announced she no longer lives in America. \"I get to escape and go somewhere,\" she explained.
Alive, but unable to thrive under absolute patriarchy
Since the Taliban returned to power, women and girls have tried defiance, but despair at their harshly restricted lives
‘It's tragic’ Reflection in the wake of Amsterdam violence
Carrying signs scrawled with messages urging unity, they laid white roses at the statue of Anne Frank, steps away from the home where her family had hidden from Nazi persecution.
