Orbital

 Winner of the 2024 Booker Prize

Six astronauts rotate in the International Space Station. They are there to do vital work, but slowly they begin to wonder: what is life without Earth? What is Earth without humanity?

A slender novel of epic power, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of 6 women & men hurtling through space—not towards the moon or the vast unknown, but around our planet. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts & cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, & Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over 17,000 miles an hour as the earth reels below. 

We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos & talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, & exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them & utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold & record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of 16 sunrises & sunsets & the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome & surprisingly intimate. So are the marks of civilization far below, encrusted on the planet on which we live. 

Profound, contemplative & gorgeous, Orbital is an eloquent meditation on space & a moving elegy to our humanity, environment, & planet.

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‘Insomnia did seem to feed into writing about how orbiting Earth 16 times a day explodes any sense of time. I’ve always been interested in time as a thing in which we live, & what the elastic form of the novel can do with it. Having insomnia so severely for such a long time has definitely changed how I think & work. Orbital is shorter & more fragmented & restless than my other novels. That’s just how I write now – more quickly, intensely, impressionistically.’