British author Samantha Harvey has won the 2024 Booker Prize for her novel Orbital, becoming the first woman since 2019 to win the prestigious literary award.
Her winning book is about astronauts looking down at Earth and was named the winner of the £50,000 ($64,000) prize and trophy at a ceremony held at Old Billingsgate in the City of London.
Harvey was previously longlisted for the award in 2009 for her debut novel The Wilderness and is the 19th woman to win since the first award in 1969. There have been 36 male winners.
Five years ago, the gong went jointly to two women, British author Bernardine Evaristo for Girl, Woman, Other and Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood for The Handmaid’s Tale sequel, The Testaments.
It was last won by a British author when Glasgow-born Douglas Stuart was named the 2020 Booker Prize winner for Shuggie Bain.
“Orbital wins the prize in a year of geopolitical crisis, likely to be the warmest year in recorded history," said Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation.
“A book about a planet ‘shaped by the sheer, amazing force of human want’, about an ‘unbounded place’ with no wall or barrier visible from space, with all politics ‘an assault on its gentleness’, it is hopeful, timely and timeless.”
This year, a record five women were shortlisted for the Booker.
Artist and chairman of the judges Edmund de Waal was asked about how it would look if the one man on the list, Percival Everett, won for James, a powerful retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, from the perspective of the enslaved Jim.
De Waal dismissed the suggestion, saying that “there was no question, that anyone could have won this, irrespective of their background, their gender, their ethnicity, whatever, absolutely anyone”.
“There was absolutely no question of box ticking or of agendas or anything else in the room at all. It was simply about a novel.”
At 136 pages long, Orbital is the second-shortest Booker winner, just behind Penelope Fitzgerald’s Offshore, which won the 1979 prize.
Harvey’s novel takes place over 24 hours, with 16 orbits around the Earth, and touches on the death of a loved one, a typhoon coming and the fragility of human life.
“As judges, we were determined to find a book that moved us, a book that had capaciousness and resonance, that we are compelled to share," de Waal said.
“We wanted everything. Orbital is our book. Samantha Harvey has written a novel propelled by the beauty of 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets. Everyone and no one is the subject, as six astronauts in the International Space Station circle the Earth, observing the passages of weather across the fragility of borders and time zones.
“With her language of lyricism and acuity, Harvey makes our world strange and new for us. All year we have celebrated fiction that inhabits ideas rather than declaiming on issues, not finding answers but changing the question of what we wanted to explore.
“Our unanimity about Orbital recognises its beauty and ambition. It reflects Harvey’s extraordinary intensity of attention to the precious and precarious world we share.”
This year’s judges all agreed on the choice. They included novelist Sara Collins, The Guardian fiction editor Justine Jordan, Chinese-born professor and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers writer Yiyun Li, and musician, composer and producer Nitin Sawhney, who has collaborated with Sir Paul McCartney and won an Ivor Novello lifetime achievement award.
Earlier on Tuesday, the shortlisted authors – Yael van der Wouden, Rachel Kushner, Anne Michaels, Charlotte Wood, Everett and Harvey – attended a reception with Queen Camilla, in her first public engagement since becoming ill with a chest infection.
Last year’s winner was Irish author Paul Lynch with his dystopian novel Prophet Song.
If you go
Flights
Emirates flies from Dubai to Phnom Penh with a stop in Yangon from Dh3,075, and Etihad flies from Abu Dhabi to Phnom Penh with its partner Bangkok Airlines from Dh2,763. These trips take about nine hours each and both include taxes. From there, a road transfer takes at least four hours; airlines including KC Airlines (www.kcairlines.com) offer quick connecting flights from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville from about $100 (Dh367) return including taxes. Air Asia, Malindo Air and Malaysian Airlines fly direct from Kuala Lumpur to Sihanoukville from $54 each way. Next year, direct flights are due to launch between Bangkok and Sihanoukville, which will cut the journey time by a third.
The stay
Rooms at Alila Villas Koh Russey (www.alilahotels.com/ kohrussey) cost from $385 per night including taxes.
Dubai World Cup factbox
Most wins by a trainer: Godolphin’s Saeed bin Suroor(9)
Most wins by a jockey: Jerry Bailey(4)
Most wins by an owner: Godolphin(9)
Most wins by a horse: Godolphin’s Thunder Snow(2)
Wenger's Arsenal reign in numbers
1,228 - games at the helm, ahead of Sunday's Premier League fixture against West Ham United.
704 - wins to date as Arsenal manager.
3 - Premier League title wins, the last during an unbeaten Invincibles campaign of 2003/04.
1,549 - goals scored in Premier League matches by Wenger's teams.
10 - major trophies won.
473 - Premier League victories.
7 - FA Cup triumphs, with three of those having come the last four seasons.
151 - Premier League losses.
21 - full seasons in charge.
49 - games unbeaten in the Premier League from May 2003 to October 2004.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
LILO & STITCH
Starring: Sydney Elizebeth Agudong, Maia Kealoha, Chris Sanders
Director: Dean Fleischer Camp
Rating: 4.5/5
'Panga'
Directed by Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari
Starring Kangana Ranaut, Richa Chadha, Jassie Gill, Yagya Bhasin, Neena Gupta
Rating: 3.5/5
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