Britain's Samantha Harvey won the 2024 Booker Prize for her novel 'Orbital', a story about a single day aboard the International Space Station that ponders the beauty and fragility of Earth.

"Orbital" tracks astronauts from Japan, Russia, the United States, Britain and Italy as they observe and reflect on their home planet, touching on themes of mourning, desire and the climate crisis.

It is the 49-year-old Harvey's fifth novel, and was the top selling book on the shortlist of six finalists, having sold more copies than the past three Booker Prize winners combined.

Judges of the prize, which is now in its 55th year, praised her writing for the "intensity of attention to the precious and precarious world".

Past winners of the prestigious Booker, which is open to works of fiction written in English, include Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Yann Martel, Hilary Mantel, Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes and Kazuo Ishiguro.

Harvey said she wrote the novel while stuck at home during the pandemic watching the space station's live camera. She likened the experience of her six characters "trapped in a tin can" to that of lockdown.

Set over 24 hours, the astronauts and cosmonauts of her story witness sixteen sunrises and sixteen sunsets as they circle the globe.

“To look 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 herself," said Harvey. "What we do to the Earth we do to ourselves.”

She said the novel “is not exactly about climate change, but implied in the view of the Earth is the fact of human-made climate change”.

In her acceptance speech, Harvey dedicated the prize to "everybody who does speak for and not against the Earth; for and not against the dignity of other humans, other life; and all the humans who speak for and call for and work for peace".

Writer and artist Edmund de Waal, who chaired the five-member judging panel, praised the “crystalline” writing and “capaciousness” of Harvey’s succinct novel - at 136 pages in its UK paperback edition, one of the shortest-ever Booker winners.

“This is a book that repays slow reading,” he said.

He said the judges spent a full day picking their winner and came to a unanimous conclusion. Harvey beat five other finalists from Canada, the United States, Australia and the Netherlands, chosen from among 156 novels submitted by publishers.

Harvey walks away with a 50,000 pound prize which she said she would disburse “some of it on tax. I want to buy a new bike. And then the rest, I want to go to Japan”. (Agencies)