“Our unanimity about Orbital recognizes its beauty and ambition. It reflects Harbey’s extraordinary intensity of attention to the precious and precarious world we share”
— Edmund de Waal, Chair of the 2024 Booker Prize judges
“In this slender novel, Harvey seems to have encompassed all of humanity… It is an extraordinary achievement”
— Observer
“Harvey beautifully evokes the wonder and fragility of our planet and its inhabitants. An uplifting book, in every sense”
— Guardian, *Books of the year*
“Gorgeously poetic… I was knocked out. It’s also surprisingly funny… One of the most original novels I’ve read this year”
— Sunday Times, *Books of the year*
“In Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, six astronauts circle the world 16 times. Gliding through Harvey’s technicolour prose is an equally frictionless experience”
— Financial Times, *Books of the Year*
“Orbital is the rarest of things, a book that satisfies both my lifelong obsession with space travel and my hunger for sentences and paragraphs that demand to be read and reread… My goodness this novel is beautiful”
— New Statesman, *Books of the Year*
“The novel itself is a kind of dream, an aesthetic arrangement of what the world might be. In its circuitous blend of past and future, the shackles of both modernity and colonialism are broken by some unseen force, leaving a chance to think about how healing might begin.”
— Literary Review of Canada
“Eerily beautiful”
— Spectator, *Books of the Year*
“Orbital is entirely original, a serenely beautiful and intelligent creation”
— Mail on Sunday, *Books of the Year*
“One of our most consistently surprising novelists rips up the rulebook again… A boldly imaginative meditation on time and the nature of existence”
— Daily Mail, *Books of the Year*
“This genius novel… Asks big questions about humanity and the fragility of our lives… A short yet exquisite read”
— Publisher