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 as the winner of the £50,000 prize and trophy at a ceremony held at Old Billingsgate in the City of 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.
"It was simply about a novel." 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.
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