Humility, perspective, human ambition in Samantha Harvey’s 'Orbital'

Samantha Harvey’s “Orbital,” the 2024 Booker Prize winner, is not a novel about space exploration as technological triumph, but an ethical meditation on human ambition, fragility and perspective. Structured around a single day in orbit, the novel follows six astronauts and cosmonauts from different nations — Nell (United States), Roman and Anton (Russia), Pietro (Italy), Chie (Japan) and Shaun (United Kingdom) — whose interior lives form an existential constellation rather than a collective mission narrative. Through their diverse responses to life in orbit, “Orbital” asks the meaning of exploration itself and questions whether humanity’s reach beyond Earth reflects curiosity and care, or arrogance and denial. Each character embodies a distinct mode of engaging with meaning under conditions of radical displacement. Shaun seeks coherence through religious faith and art, yet remains divided between wonder and grief, articulating human consciousness as “a labyrinth of mirrors.” Chie carries the quiet devastation of her mother’s death, a loss intensified by the surreWeiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Korea Times Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Korea Times