A slender novel of epic power, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men hurtling through space—not towards the moon or the vast unknown, but around our planet. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprisingly intimate. So are the marks of civilization far below, encrusted on the planet on which we live.

Profound, contemplative and gorgeous, Orbital is a gift—a moving elegy to our humanity, environment, and planet.

Praise for Orbital:

A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 from Literary Hub
A Most Anticipated Book of Fall from the Guardian and Los Angeles Times 

“Beautiful . . . [A] gorgeous meditation.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Samantha Harvey is a beautiful stylist; in Orbital a group of astronauts look down on our fragile Earth. It’s a slim, profound study of intimate human fears set against epic vistas of swirling weather patterns and rolling continents.”—Guardian (UK)

“A radiant explosion of a novel.”—Jamie Quatro

“One of the most beautiful novels I have read in a very long time.”—Mark Haddon, author of The Porpoise

“This is such a beautiful book you have to adjust your readerly heart to take it all in. The plot is simply and extraordinarily our planet, watched by a handful of souls. Orbital wonders what it’s like to be a human ‘with a godly view’ and because Samantha Harvey is such a spectacular prose stylist the wondering takes the form of breathtaking colour storms and brilliant encircling epiphanies of time and scale, technology and love, ambition and faith. It is an awe-inspiring and humbling love letter to Earth and those who reckon with the gift of it.”—Max Porter, author of Shy

“A gorgeous song of praise from on high, a hymn sung in starlight to celebrate mankind’s courage and endeavour. And without preaching or speeching it also serves as a lyric reminder of all we might lose if we do not mend our ways.”—Mike McCormack, author of Solar Bones

“I admire Orbital even more than the rest of Harvey’s work . . . I don’t think I’ve read anything else with such love for its characters and such clarity about the state of the planet, and I was deeply grateful for the novel’s refusal of despair or cynicism.”—Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater

“Orbital is a magnificent, thunderous work and yet so brief, so fleeting. It is an elegy to planet Earth in all its splendour and fragility. Exquisitely well-written, it confirms Samantha Harvey as a singular talent.”—Nathan Filer, author of The Shock of the Fall

“Six astronauts on a space station are working, sleeping, and watching the world go by. They think about typhoons, algal blooms, seascapes, cities at night, Velázquez, frog calls, fried eggs, family. Orbital is a lush description of the gorgeous earth, and a broad-minded, level-headed, affectionate take on what goes on down here.”—Daisy Hildyard, author of Emergency

Praise for The Western Wind:

“Beautifully rendered, deeply affecting, thoroughly thoughtful and surprisingly prescient.”—New York Times Book Review

“Harvey is an intelligent and audacious writer, able and willing to take creative risks and perform stylistic feats. . . This is a beautifully written and expertly structured medieval mystery packed with intrigue, drama and shock revelations…We navigate the corners of Harvey’s characters, all the while marveling at the intricacy of her puzzle and the seductiveness of her prose.”―Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Harvey has summoned this remote world with writing of the highest quality, conjuring its pungencies and peculiarities… In this superb novel, time, like guilt, is a murky medium, at once advancing and circling back, and pulling humankind helplessly between its battling currents.”―Wall Street Journal

“The Western Wind brings medieval England back to life… By the time we find out how Tom Newman died, we’re less interested in a mystery solved and more intrigued by the fate of a long-gone place, a place that Harvey brings to life from its historical tomb.”―Washington Post