By Samantha Harvey
I read this on the plane to Barcelona on Boxing Day 2023.
I found out a few months later that it won the Booker Prize, and it’s very well deserved. It’s a short novella about six astronauts on the ISS, but it’s more an elegy to space and a reflection on our planet
It’s haunting and evocative and poetic. Harvey did extensive research into spaceflight and astronauts’ experiences, and it really shows. The psychological impact of hurtling along in breathless silence hundreds of miles above the surface of the planet, with startling blues and greens and purples below you, surrounded by a pinpricked blackness, is incredibly hard to convey, but I think she comes close.