{"id":24181,"date":"2026-01-08T20:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T19:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogak.donostiakultura.eus\/liburu-dantza\/?p=24181"},"modified":"2026-01-08T20:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T19:20:08","slug":"orbital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogak.donostiakultura.eus\/liburu-dantza\/orbital\/","title":{"rendered":"Orbital"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Donostia Book Club, we start the year by discussing Samantha Harvey<\/strong>‘s novel Orbital<\/a>. Published in 2023, it won the 2024 Booker Prize and stands out for its original subject matter and the way it is handled in such a brief space. The author tells us about four astronauts and two cosmonauts on the International Space Station. I say \u2018tells us things\u2019 because we don’t see their entire stay, nor their complete past, nor do we know anything about their future. We have images, scenes, random thoughts, connected by the fact that they are all in low Earth orbit at the same time. That is why some people question whether this book can be considered a novel: as it has no plot, it deviates from the typical structure of this literary genre.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

If I had to sum it up in one sentence, I would say that it is a book about the very intimate perception of the greatness of the universe, the vertigo that direct contact with something infinite can cause, and the ways in which we can continue to be individuals despite everything. Each of the characters we meet is experiencing, at the moment we see them, almost the same things. They see the same things, they are in the same space. But their inner worlds are affected by their past, by their desires, by the news they receive from Earth. The complexity of life as something common, but at the same time something so intrinsic, is reflected in the rich images Harvey conveys to us. The author’s prose is both lyrical and vivid, the best experience a reader could imagine.<\/p>\n

A book that in just 200 pages mixes the personal, the scientific and the metaphysical will surely give us a lot to talk about. On 12 January<\/strong>, among other issues, we will try to answer the following questions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
- In a recent interview with the Booker Prizes, Samantha Harvey said\r\n  she \u2018wanted to write about our human occupation of low earth orbit\r\n  for the last quarter of a century \u2013 not as sci-fi but as realism\u2019.\r\n  In doing so, Harvey wondered if she could \u2018evoke the beauty of that\r\n  vantage point with the care of a nature writer\u2019. Do you think she\r\n  succeeded in this approach? How does her depiction of space\r\n  travel compare to both traditional sci-fi and nature writing? <\/span><\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n- Orbital takes place over a single day, a Tuesday in October. During\r\n  the course of that day, the craft orbits Earth 16 times. How does the\r\n  author use the concept of time to structure the narrative? What effect\r\n  does this one-day snapshot have on the reader\u2019s understanding of the\r\n  characters\u2019 experiences and the sense of time in space? <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n- Harvey frequently uses metaphor throughout the novel. How does\r\n  her use of these devices enhance the reader\u2019s ability to visualise\r\n  the astronauts\u2019 experience? Does it make these extraordinary,\r\n  otherworldly events more relatable? <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n- Throughout the novel, Harvey makes several implicit references to\r\n  climate change. \u202fDiscuss how such references function as part of\r\n  the subtext of the novel.  <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n- The novel contrasts the astronauts\u2019 cyclical, repetitive day-to-day\r\n  activities in space, such as exercise, sustenance, maintenance and\r\n  chores; with the vast, dynamic life on Earth below. How does Harvey\r\n  use this juxtaposition of perspective to balance the novel and explore\r\n  the relationship between the micro (the astronauts\u2019 world) and the\r\n  macro (the billions of lives on Earth)? <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n- In a review for The New Yorker, James Wood writes that \u2018Orbital is\r\n  the strangest and most magical of projects, not least because it\u2019s\r\n  barely what most people would call a novel but performs the kind\r\n  of task that only a novel could dare. It\u2019s barely a novel because it\r\n  barely tells a plotted set of human stories, and the stories it does\r\n  tell barely interact with one another.\u2019 Do you agree Orbital is\r\n  \u2018barely a novel\u2019? Discuss the absence of conventional plot and\r\n  how this affects the reading experience. And if it\u2019s not really a\r\n  novel, what is it? <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n- Orbital contains numerous references to past events in the\r\n  lives of the astronauts. How do these references shape our\r\n  impression of the characters, and enhance the novel\u2019s depth?\r\n  Would it have been a different novel without these backstories?   <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n- Harvey\u2019s prose is often repetitive and looping, and deployed\r\n  with a rhythmic style. How does this impact the reader\u2019s\r\n  experience and the novel\u2019s overall tone? <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n- Harvey\u2019s work has drawn comparisons to Virginia Woolf from\r\n  both readers and critics. In a recent interview with the Guardian,\r\n  she said, \u2018I admire Woolf probably more than any other writer\r\n  I can think of. I didn\u2019t think about parallels with\u202fThe Waves\r\n  while writing Orbital, but I can see there\u2019s something [similar]\r\n  about the way voices surface and dissipate. If the influence\r\n  was there, it wasn\u2019t conscious.\u2019 In your reading of the novel,\r\n  do you see similarities between Harvey\u2019s work and that of Woolf?  <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n- Orbital touches on themes of religion, meaning and existentialism,\r\n  as the astronauts grapple with their place in the universe while\r\nobserving Earth from above. How does Harvey explore these big\r\n  themes, within the context of their confinement? In what ways\r\n  does the characters\u2019 isolation amplify such existential questions?  <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nQuestions taken from: <\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>\r\nhttps:\/\/thebookerprizes.com\/the-booker-library\/features\/reading-guide-orbital-by-samantha-harvey<\/a><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/pre>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At Donostia Book Club, we start the year by discussing Samantha Harvey‘s novel Orbital. Published in 2023, it won the 2024 Booker Prize and stands out for its original subject matter and the way it is handled in such a brief space. The author tells us about four astronauts and two cosmonauts on the International […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":24186,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eleberria"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogak.donostiakultura.eus\/liburu-dantza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogak.donostiakultura.eus\/liburu-dantza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogak.donostiakultura.eus\/liburu-dantza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogak.donostiakultura.eus\/liburu-dantza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogak.donostiakultura.eus\/liburu-dantza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24181"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogak.donostiakultura.eus\/liburu-dantza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24193,"href":"https:\/\/blogak.donostiakultura.eus\/liburu-dantza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24181\/revisions\/24193"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogak.donostiakultura.eus\/liburu-dantza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogak.donostiakultura.eus\/liburu-dantza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogak.donostiakultura.eus\/liburu-dantza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogak.donostiakultura.eus\/liburu-dantza\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}