The surprise factor dominated the Booker award this Tuesday, the most prestigious literary prize for a novel written in English, in which the British Samantha Harvey (Kent, 49 years old) was the winner with Orbitalan original work that follows the adventures for 24 hours of six astronauts sent to the International Space Station and that raises complex debates about the meaning of human existence. In an edition dominated by women, authors of five of the six finalist works, Harvey beat the one that all the pools gave as the favorite, the American Percival Everett, who dares, with Jamesto rewrite The Adventures of Huckleberry Finnby Mark Twain, from the perspective of the slave Jim.
The ceremony took place in the Old Billingsgate complex, in the heart of the City of London, where well-known cultural figures enjoyed a three-course dinner prior to the announcement of the winner, who, after managing to recover from the shock of the ruling of the jury, admitted that “I did not expect this.” The award comes to her in her debut as a finalist for the Booker and with her fifth novel, which she herself has acknowledged almost does not exist, since she abandoned it due to “fears of invading other people’s spaces and illegitimacy.” “Who would want to listen to a woman talking about space from her desk,” he declared after learning of his victory, in a brief speech in which he confessed to having “thought I had no authority to write this book.”
His is, however, the best-seller in the United Kingdom of the six nominations for an award that, according to previous winners, has the potential to change an author’s career forever. Orbital It is also the shortest, with 136 pages, in a year that has stood out, in fact, for works of relatively short length, and four of them do not reach 300 pages. It is also one of the few novels set in space to have been nominated for the Booker over the years and the first to do so. Harvey described his work as “an exercise in reflection” on our planet and wanted to dedicate the award “to all those who speak for and not against the Earth, in favor of the dignity of life, in favor of those who speak for peace.”
The 55th edition of the Booker, endowed with an amount of 50,000 pounds (about 60,000 euros), began with special expectations, not only because of the level of the works selected out of a total of 156, but also because it contained the largest female representation since its creation in 1969. Although gender has nothing to do with literary excellence, the organization was aware that optics also matter, and the usual male hegemony has been questioned even by members of the jury: novelist Sara Collins had claimed that “it was the moment of the Paulettes and the Paulinas”, in reference to last year’s list, in which half of the authors had Paul as their first name (Paul Murray, Paul Harding and Paul Lynch), of which Lynch was the winner for The prophet’s songbased on an imaginary Ireland in which tyranny is established.
From the founding of the Booker until last year, only 18 women had won the prize, two of them twice: Hilary Mantel and Margaret Atwood, who won it in 2019. from the same with Bernadine Evaristo, the last time the award had a female name until Tuesday night. As in all literary awards, there are all those who are there, but not all who are there are, and choosing the winner has once again been a particularly complicated task.
Universal themes such as trauma, grief, existential crisis, climate threat or the legacy of wars appear in the extensive catalog of stories of the finalists of this 55th edition, for which the favorite, from the beginning, seemed to be Everett , finalist already in 2022 with The trees. His twist on Twain’s work has been hailed by critics as the best of his 24 novels, and is a scathing critique of contemporary racism, presenting Jim as a cultured, secretly educated man who, like the rest of The black protagonists of the novel change their spoken register in the presence of white people, as a method of survival.
Another who had also previously appeared on the final list of candidates for the Booker was the American Rachel Kushner, who was competing this time for Creation Lakethe story of an American spy who infiltrates an environmentalist commune in France. The work is able to combine the spy genre with a treatise on human history and has been celebrated by critics as the culmination of Kushner’s career, which includes titles that have received widespread praise, such as The flamethrowers o Mars roomprecisely the one that had catapulted her as a Booker finalist in 2018.
A particularly notable aspect of this edition has also been the national diversity, with five countries represented: the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and even the Netherlands, a variety favored by the change in the rules of the award in 2014, when it was opened. to any English-language publication, rather than being limited to Commonwealth authors. The only author competing with her debut in the literary world was the Dutch, born in Israel, Yael van der Wouden, also the youngest of all the candidates (37 years old), who in The Safekeep addresses the treatment of Jews in post-war Holland.
Another finalist was the Australian Charlotte Wood, who connects with the climate crisis in Stone Yard Devotionaladdressing the story of a woman who, despite not having a particularly instinct for faith, leaves Sydney to move to a religious community, giving way to a study about forgiveness and female friendship; while the Canadian poet Anne Michaels presents in Heldhis third novel, a moving lyrical essay about trauma and memory, set in different settings ranging from World War I to the remote countryside of northern England, in a saga that spans four generations.