Play Audiobook Sample
Orbital Audiobook
Play Audiobook Sample
(5.00) - 1 listener ratings
Quick Stats About this Audiobook
Total Audiobook Chapters:
Longest Chapter Length:
Shortest Chapter Length:
Average Chapter Length:
Audiobooks by this Author:
Publisher Description
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 an eloquent meditation on space and a moving elegy to our humanity, environment, and planet.
Download and start listening now!
"The author is brilliant with her word choices and her understanding of the complicated mental and emotional processes of astronauts aboard the international space station. The narration is perfection as well. What a book!!"
— Kaet (5 out of 5 stars)
Quotes
-
“Their rare vantage point affords new perspectives on the planet below, including the lives they left behind.”
— New York Times -
"A slim, profound study of intimate human fears set against epic vistas of swirling weather patterns and rolling continents.”
— The Guardian (London) -
“Coming from five different countries, the space travelers represent a microcosm of humanity.”
— Library Journal (starred review) -
“Luminous and profound, Orbital is hard to put down and even harder to forget.”
— Booklist (starred review) -
“One of the most beautiful novels I have read in a very long time.”
— Mark Haddon, New York Times bestselling author -
“This is such a beautiful book you have to adjust your readerly heart to take it all in…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 magnificent, thunderous work and yet so brief, so fleeting. It is an elegy to planet Earth in all its splendor and fragility.”
— Nathan Filer, author of The Shock of the Fall
Awards
-
An Amazon Editor’s Top Pick
-
A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice of the Week
-
An Oprah.com Best Books of the Year
-
A London Guardian Best Book of the Year
-
Winner of the Booker Prize
-
Winner of the Hawthornden Prize
-
Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize
-
Shortlisted for the The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction
Orbital Listener Reviews
Be the first to write a review about this audiobook!
About Samantha Harvey
Samantha Harvey is the author of one work of nonfiction and five novels, including The Wilderness, which won the Betty Trask Prize. Her books have been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Guardian First Book Award, and the James Tait Black Prize, as well as longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Baileys Women’s Prize. She teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University, Bath, England.