London – British writer Samantha Harvey won the British Booker Prize for fiction today for her short novel Orbital, which deals with the stay of astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS). Press agencies informed about it.
Harvey described her fifth novel, which she began writing during the lockdown during the covid-19 pandemic, as a “space pastoral”. It takes place over 24 hours on board the ISS and, in addition to the normal tasks and duties of six astronauts, two men and four women, it also follows their deeper reflections and thoughts about Earth, God or new existential threats such as climate change.
Harvey herself previously said that she almost gave up writing the novel. “Why on earth would anyone want to read about space from a woman who writes about it from her desk in Wiltshire and imagines what it must be like when other people have actually been there? I was losing my temper, I thought, on I have no right to write this book,” she said.
With 136 pages, Orbital is the second shortest book to win the prestigious Booker literary prize, which comes with a 50,000 pound prize (1.5 million crowns). Harvey is the first British writer since 2019 to win the prize. She beat out five other finalists from Canada, the United States, Australia and the Netherlands, who were selected from a total of 156 novels submitted by publishers.
The Booker Prize has been awarded since 1969 and is intended for English-language novels published in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Its previous holders include, among others, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan or Margaret Atwood.
Britain literature Booker award PHOTO
Source: www.ceskenoviny.cz
