This year’s Booker literary prize has been won by a 49-year-old British author Samantha Harvey from his novel Orbital.
The novel follows six astronauts from Japan, Russia, the United States, Great Britain and Italy on the International Space Station orbiting the Earth for 24 hours. The themes of the work include sadness, desire and the climate crisis.
– Looking at the Earth from space is like a child looking into a mirror and realizing for the first time that the person in the mirror is himself, Harvey said in his award speech.
– What we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves, he continued.
This time, a record five women were nominated for the prestigious literary award. The winner was announced on Tuesday evening in London. The prize is worth 50,000 pounds, or about 60,000 euros. They have previously won the award, among other things Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood.
The Booker Prize for Literature is awarded to a work of fiction written in English and published in the last 12 months in Great Britain or Ireland. The prize has been considered to have highlighted many talented writers who were previously unknown to the general public.
Sources: AFP, AP