The Booker Prize, a prestigious literary award that rewards works of fiction in English, was awarded to the British Samantha Harvey for her fifth novel, OrbitalTuesday, November 12, at the end of a predominantly female competition. At the end of a ceremony organized in London, she defeated four women and one man and succeeded the Irish writer Paul Lynch.
Imbued with lyricism, Orbital It tells the story of a day in the life of six astronauts, two men and four women, aboard a space station. Constructed in almost meditative fragments, this novel offers a reflection on grief, desire and the climate crisis. The theme of the book is not so much the discovery of space, but rather the place of humans in the universe.
Orbital It is in line with previous texts by Samantha Harvey, a 49-year-old novelist, which purport to be explorations of the human psyche. Like his book on memory loss (the lost memoryStock) or about his insomnia (The shapeless malaisenot translated). This work was published in March 2024 in French by Flammarion. It was very well received by international critics.
Launched in 1969, the Booker Prize annually awards the author of “The best novel written in English”. Compared to the French Goncourt, it has contributed to the success of writers such as Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood and even the 2024 Nobel Prize winner Han Kang, who won it in 2016 with the vegetarian. The prize consists of a reward of 50,000 books (about 60,000 euros) and the promise of international fame synonymous with success in bookstores.
Percival Everett was the favorite
Samantha Harvey defied the odds that favored Americans Rachel Kushner and Percival Everett. The latter, multi-award-winning, was the great favorite of this competition with Jaime.
A bit like Kamel Daoud, Goncourt Prize 2024 who published in 2013 with Meursault, counter-investigation a counterpoint to Albert Camus’ classic, The strangerJames Everett revisits one of the masterpieces of American literature: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark Twain. This time, the narration is from the point of view of Jim, a slave.
One of the main plot threads is linguistic. In Twain, Jim’s dialect makes him a limited and somewhat pathetic character. In Everett, it is considered a survival tool that slaves used to hide their true abilities from white slavers. Like her compatriot Rachel Kushner with creation lake (Medici Prize 2018 with The Mars Club), he missed the famous award for the second time.
The Canadian Anne Michaels, nicknamed by her compatriot Margaret Atwood, also leaves empty-handed despite the very good reviews from the press with Held. In this new novel, the novelist explores the themes of her previous stories: history, memory, the effects of trauma and mourning over long periods, through the story of a man trying to overcome the wound of the Great War.
The global workshops
Discover the writing workshops organized with “Le Monde des livres”
The global workshops
Disappointment also for the Australian Charlotte Wood who failed to win with Stone Courtyard Devotional. In this seventh book, the author tells the story of an anonymous woman who, after leaving her job as a conservationist and her husband, retires to an isolated community of nuns near the town where she grew up. She was the first Australian to reach the final of the award in ten years.
Finally, the youngest in the competition, the Dutch Yael van der Wouden, failed to surprise with her historic fresco. Custodyhis acclaimed first novel.
