The latest addition to my website isSamantha Harvey‘s Orbital. The novel is set entirely on the International Space Station as it orbits the Earth (sixteen times a day), with a multinational (US, UK Italy Japan, Russia) crew of six. But don’t let that put you off, as it won the 2024 Booker Prize and deservedly so. Harvey skilfully mixes the mundane – the various things the crew have to do, the poetic -the wonderful descriptions of what they see, including a typhoon they are tracking and the philosophical – being on the station has them thinking of man’s place in the cosmos and what we are doing to our planet. We learn some of the back stories how they get on with one another, space walks and the problems of spending nine months in such cramped quarters with five strangers. Harvey is such a good writer that this book never flags and is a a joy to read.