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Orbital

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

**WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024**

Six astronauts rotate in their spacecraft contemplating the world below

A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.

Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction.

The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?

'Beautiful in every aspect'
SARAH MOSS, author of Summerwater

'One of the most beautiful novels I have read in a very long time'
MARK HADDON, author of The Porpoise

'One of the UK's most exquisite stylists'
GUARDIAN

‘Awe-inspiring’
Max Porter

©2023 Samantha Harvey (P)2023 Penguin Audio

 Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Science Fiction Space Exploration Fiction Heartfelt Interstellar

Critic reviews

Our unanimity about Orbital recognises its beauty and ambition. It reflects Harvey’s extraordinary intensity of attention to the precious and precarious world we share (Edmund de Waal, Chair of the 2024 Booker Prize judges)
In this slender novel, Harvey seems to have encompassed all of humanity… It is an extraordinary achievement
Gorgeously poetic… I was knocked out. It’s also surprisingly funny… One of the most original novels I’ve read this year
Harvey beautifully evokes the wonder and fragility of our planet and its inhabitants. An uplifting book, in every sense
In Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, six astronauts circle the world 16 times. Gliding through Harvey’s technicolour prose is an equally frictionless experience
Orbital is the rarest of things, a book that satisfies both my lifelong obsession with space travel and my hunger for sentences and paragraphs that demand to be read and reread… My goodness this novel is beautiful
Eerily beautiful
One of our most consistently surprising novelists rips up the rulebook again… A boldly imaginative meditation on time and the nature of existence
Orbital is entirely original, a serenely beautiful and intelligent creation
This genius novel… Asks big questions about humanity and the fragility of our lives… A short yet exquisite read
All stars
Most relevant
I wanted to love this book, for there is a lot to love in it (nice prose, a general sensation of warmness it evokes), even if its meditative, light-on-the-plot narration is clearly not everyone's cup of tea. But ultimately I found myself a bit bored and I can't decide if it's the book itself or the delivery: the narrator has a nice voice, but the tone sounded artificially perky to me, at odds with the intimate, inward-gazing style of the book. I'd like to give it another go sometime, but with a printed version. It could be that it's just one of those books that one should read actively to themselves in one's own internal voice, instead of having it passively read out by someone else.

mixed feelings

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Either too big or too small the book just never hits the scale at which you care. it's timely, sure, but is that all? BE prepared for a lot of placenames listed and an over romantic ideal of the world which misses all the messy realness. it's all a bit too polished, where is all the space junk.

Dull

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It wasn’t a very good recording. I am slightly hard of hearing and the annunciation of the reader was poor so I missed a lot . I’d like to read it though.

A pity the recording was poor and hard to hear.

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A slender novel of epic power, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and 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 and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour.
This is a rich, beautiful and lyrical novel. I listened to it over a two day period and I am about to listen to it again. This is not a conventional novel as regards to plot, it is more of a profound meditation on our place in the expanse of the universe. That is not to say that it is preachy or dull, on the contrary it is a work that will stay in your imagination for a long time after you have listened. Sarah Naudi's performance is faultless and the subtle accent led characterisations are captured well. I cannot praise this novel enough.

A PROFOUND NOVEL.

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The depth and writing are wonderful at times, a very different type of book. Short and enjoyable.

Deep and unconventional

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