Author: Samantha Harvey
Published: 2023
Pages: 160
Prize: Shortlist, Man Booker 2024
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Orbital is a poetic reflection on life from space. Six astronauts, circling Earth, marvel at its natural beauty while grappling with personal loss and humanity’s fragility. As they observe glaciers, deserts, and storms, they question humanity’s connection to Earth, realizing their deep bond with the planet despite the vast distance. A love letter to nature and existence.
Complexity
CEFR: B2
Plot Complexity: low
Language Complexity: moderate
Ideas Complexity: moderate
Blurb
The earth, from here, is like heaven. It flows with colour. A burst of hopeful colour.
A book of wonder, Orbital is nature writing from space and an unexpected and profound love letter to life on Earth
Six astronauts rotate in their spacecraft above the earth. They are there to 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?
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