Human to human: The great expanse of Space has always held a particular allure, right?

What’s not to ponder: The vast unknown, the weightless drift of bodies suspended in the ether, the sheer perspective shift that looking down at our planet affords. 

Samantha Harvey’s Orbital transforms this fascination into a quiet, poetic meditation on the human condition – our loves, fears, musings, and fragile mortality. 

With her Booker Prize-winning novel, Harvey catapults her writing far beyond the daily to-dos of astronauts aboard the International Space Station; she dissects what it means to be human when all earthly ties are held together only by thin threads of memory and gravity. 

You’ll be disappointed if you go into Orbital expecting a plot-heavy sci-fi narrative. 

But if you let go and allow yourself to float in the book’s hypnotic rhythm, you’ll find yourself somewhere out of this world (no pun intended). 

Orbital by Samantha Harvey Synopsis

Orbital follows six astronauts from around the globe—Japan, the United States, Britain, Italy, and Russia—for 24 hours aboard the International Space Station. 

Each chapter marks one of their 16 complete orbits of Earth, a 90-minute loop through breathtaking views, existential musings, and the minute realities of life in space. 

There is no grand conflict or high-stakes disaster; instead, Harvey focuses on the astronauts’ thoughts and reflections on home, love, geopolitics, climate change, and the ungraspable concept of existence.

Their station, their home for this brief moment in time, hurls through the vacuum at 16,000 miles per hour while life on Earth trudges on, unaware. Their scientific and intensely personal observations force a confrontation with their humanity. 

The Cosmic Calendar – Carl Sagan’s concept mapping the universe’s history onto a single year – looms in the background, reminding us how infinitesimally small yet intrinsically significant each of us is.

From One Lover of Space to Another

As someone fascinated with space since childhood, I was immediately drawn to Orbital. 

It is a book that paradoxically grounds you while lifting you into the vastness of space, stretching ideas about what a novel can be.

Harvey writes in a way that mirrors the astronauts’ experience: floating, untethered, poetic yet sharply observant. The prose is fluid, sentences cascading with an almost stream-of-consciousness quality. 

Orbital reads like a love letter to Earth. Quietly observing every detail of its beauty, fragility, and the fleeting nature of our existence against the cosmic scale.

For those used to traditional narratives, Orbital may feel jarring. It lacks a structured plot in the conventional sense; instead, it drifts through thoughts, interactions, and quiet moments of reflection. 

And yet, it achieves something many books never manage: it forces the reader to slow down, contemplate, and feel. 

Each astronaut is fully realised, not through dramatic backstory but through their silent, intimate moments of vulnerability. They are all different, yet they are all the same, caught in the same orbit, bound by the same existential musings.

The novel is deeply introspective, touching on philosophy, science, and spirituality in natural rather than forced ways. Harvey’s language is so beautiful that it is easy to forgive the lack of traditional conflict. She masterfully wields structure and rhythm, allowing the reader’s thoughts to float alongside the characters’.

If you’re the type of reader who needs a beginning, middle, and end in their storytelling, Orbital may not be for you. 

But if you allow yourself to break free from those expectations, to drift along with the prose, you’ll love this short read.

Awards & Critical Acclaim

Orbital has received widespread acclaim, winning the 2024 Booker Prize and the Hawthornden Prize, and securing a spot on the shortlists for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize. 

The novel has not been without controversy. It has also sparked discussions about geopolitical undertones, proving that even a story set in space is not free from Earth’s divisions.

Although Harvey’s rebuttal upon accepting the Booker Prize speaks volumes, dedicating the award “to everybody who does speak for and not against the Earth; for and not against the dignity of other humans, other life; and all the humans who speak for and call for and work for peace.” (New York Times, 2024)

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Harvey’s Orbital is not a book to be devoured.

It’s a book to be experienced. It forces you to slow down, to observe, to feel. 

It is a novel between literary fiction and philosophical inquiry, a pastoral space that finds beauty in both the infinite cosmos and the quietest of human thoughts. 

If you’re ready to let go of expectations and simply float, Orbital will take you somewhere unforgettable.

Descending Thoughts: Read this book not for its story, but for its experience. Let it change your orbit.