The Bookseller - News - Booker Prize winner Samantha Harvey nearly 'lost her nerve' when writing Orbital

The space-set novel won the £50,000 award on Tuesday evening (12th November), 15 years after the author was first longlisted. She is the first woman to win in five years and the 136-page book is the second shortest book to take the prize in 45 years. The win has been widely celebrated by the trade, shifting the biggest number of any of the shortlist with 29,000 copies sold this year. The publisher has pledged a reprint of 100,000.

Harvey described the win as "very unusual, exhilarating and very shocking". She told The Bookseller: "I was totally shocked by result, overwhelming-but am delighted... I haven't slept very much, I got to bed at 2am and was too tired, and then had to get up at 7am anyway."

While the Kent-born author believes she would be a "hopeless astronaut-I would be travel sick, terribly anxious, I'd probably have a panic attack," she enjoyed poring over books by astronauts, and describes how "you could spend your whole life on the NASA website".