Author(s): Samantha Harvey

General Fiction

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

'A slim, profound study of intimate human fears set against epic vistas' GUARDIAN

Matilda Bookshop Review

In this extraordinary novel six astronauts circle the earth, each of the analytically inclined crew offering us their purest observations. There is little here of the earth-bound conflict that fuels a traditional narrative, with the very nature of storytelling changing in a landscape as alien as space. Of particular note is Harvey's masterful ability to conjure up our intrepid cosmonauts warped sense of time; absolutely brilliant!

The prose is exquisite and often strikingly moving. Is there any better setting than in orbit to ponder all the great and tiny things that make up life on earth? Awe is not an emotion often conjured in me by literature, but this was the feeling I was left with after Orbital. Emilie