The Booker Prize Winner 2024

Hello Gentle Reader,
 
This years Booker Prize has been awarded to the English writer Samantha Harvey for her novel: “Orbital.”
 
“Orbital,” is the second shortest book to have received the Booker Prize, accounting for four pages longer than Penelope Fitzgerald’s 1979 Booker winning novel “Offshore.” Perhaps Samantha Harvey’s win with “Orbital,” proves that shorter novels are more then a match to larger novels. Even more so, considering shorter novels require a gardener’s hand for pruning and a jeweler’s eye detail. Where larger novels can juggle multiple balls, granting them permissible room to let some inconsequentially fall without ceremony or fault. Whereas a shorter novel juggles only a few jeweled eggs, but there is no allowance for mishaps.
 
To contrast this years Booker Prize from last years award, judging chair Edmund de Waal confirmed that this year’s winner was chosen unanimously by the judges and that the judges read all 156 nominated books to completion. The unanimity of the judge’s decision according to de Waal recognizes the intensity of Harvey’s literary ambition in recognizing not only the preciousness of our shared planet, but also its precariousness. The novel itself recounts the one day in the life of twelve astronauts as they orbit the earth. The novel recounts not only the routine of life on the space station, but also their lives back on earth which tether and anchor them home. Through sixteen sunrises and sunsets, they orbit the blue celestial marble of home. “Orbital,” is a breath of fresh air. The novel is the necessary injection of literary pleasure and craftsmanship the Booker Prize needed, after years of politically charged and statement like novels. “Orbital,” embraces the possibility of the writer’s capacity to imagine and reflect on the vastness of space and our own celestial provincial attitudes in comparison to the magnanimity of space.
 
A very well earned prized. Congratulations to Samantha Harvey.
 

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read


M. Mary