British author Samantha Harvey has become the first woman since 2019 to win the Booker Prize.
Her book Orbital, about astronauts looking down at Earth, was named the winner of the £50,000 prize and trophy at a ceremony held in London.
Harvey, who was longlisted for the prestigious literary prize in 2009 for her debut novel The Wilderness, is the 19th woman to win since the first award in 1969. There have been 36 male winners.
On stage, she said: “Gosh, I have no idea how to deal with this. I have not expected it. I’m completely overwhelmed.”
She dedicated the prize to “everybody who does speak for, and arnot against the eth, for and not against the dignity of other humans, other life and all the people who speak for and call for and work for peace”.
Harvey, from Wiltshire, also said: “I suppose it’s fair to say that no Booker speech has ever been made in a perfect world.
“It’s hard to not acknowledge the imperfections of the world that we live in today.”
Queen Camilla held a reception at Clarence House for the shortlisted authors on Tuesday, in her first public engagement since falling ill with a chest infection.
In a statement on X, Camilla congratulated Harvey: “Many congratulations to Samantha Harvey on having won the Booker Prize Award 2024 with your brilliant novel, Orbital!”
Five years ago, the gong went jointly to two women, British author Bernardine Evaristo for Girl, Woman, Other and Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood for The Handmaid’s Tale sequel The Testaments.
It was last won by a British author when Glasgow-born Douglas Stuart was named the 2020 Booker Prize winner for Shuggie Bain.
Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, said: “Orbital wins the prize in a year of geopolitical crisis, likely to be the warmest year in recorded history.
“A book about a planet ‘shaped by the sheer amazing force of human want’, about an ‘unbounded place’ with no wall or barrier visible from space, with all politics ‘an assault on its gentleness’, it is hopeful, timely and timeless.”
This year, a record number of women were shortlisted for the Booker, with five nominated in total.
At 136 pages long, Orbital is the second shortest Booker winner, just behind Penelope Fitzgerald’s Offshore, which won the 1979 prize.
Harvey’s novel takes place over a 24-hour time frame, with 16 orbits around the Earth, and touches on the death of a loved one, a typhoon coming, and the fragility of human life.
Artist and chairman of the judges, Edmund de Waal, said: “As judges, we were determined to find a book that moved us, a book that had capaciousness and resonance, that we are compelled to share.
“We wanted everything. Orbital is our book.”
This year’s judges all agreed on the choice, and included novelist Sara Collins, The Guardian fiction editor Justine Jordan, Chinese-born professor and A Thousand Years Of Good Prayers writer Yiyun Li and musician, composer and producer Nitin Sawhney, who has collaborated with Sir Paul McCartney and won an Ivor Novello lifetime achievement gong.
The shortlisted authors include Yael van der Wouden, Rachel Kushner, Anne Michaels, Charlotte Wood, Everett and Harvey.
Last year’s winner was Irish author Paul Lynch with his dystopian novel Prophet Song.
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