I've seen it said that Booker Prize winners are more enjoyable reads than Nobel Prize laureates, and I couldn't agree more. Orbital, the 2024 Booker Prize winner, is a masterpiece, as many have noted. In fact, Samantha Harvey's Orbital was my book of the year. While the Nobel Prize tends to focus on the grand sweep of human civilization, the Booker Prize remains dedicated to the art of storytelling, and Orbital is a prime example.
I've rarely encountered writing as beautiful, warm, rich, and heartfelt. While it's categorized as a novel, I prefer to think of it as a long-form essay. Harvey uses the 24-hour journey of six astronauts orbiting Earth sixteen times as a framework to explore profound themes: humanity's relationship with the planet, the cosmos, time, existence, mortality, individual experiences, and human connection.
Extraordinary people on an extraordinary journey in an extraordinary place, yet their thoughts are ordinary. The novel expertly juxtaposes extreme opposites within the confines of a space station, offering a unique perspective. Reading Orbital felt like making my own orbit around Earth, an experience I'll never forget. Samantha Harvey's vibrant, passionate, and musical prose allows readers to soar beyond our planet, leaving their bodies behind while their minds embark on an incredible journey.
Orbital is a rare blend of scientific rigor and literary flourish. Scientifically, it chronicles the space station's sixteen orbits around Earth. Yet, from a literary standpoint, it's a journey of self-discovery for the six astronauts as they repeatedly traverse their home planet and delve into their inner worlds. By experiencing multiple sunrises and sunsets in a day and crossing entire continents in mere minutes, the characters develop a profound understanding of time, geography, history, and their place in the world. Harvey's astute choice of setting and characters allows her to explore these profound shifts in human perception, demonstrating the transformative power of literature.
It's hard to describe the impact this book had on me. I can only do so by sharing a passage that had the most profound effect:
"No need to speak; you only have to look out through the window at a radiance doubling and redoubling. The earth, from here, is like heaven. It flows with colour. A burst of hopeful colour. When we're on that planet we look up and think heaven is elsewhere, but here is what the astronauts and cosmonauts sometimes think: maybe all of us born to it have already died and are in an afterlife. If we must go to an improbable, hard-to- believe-in place when we die, that glassy, distant orb with its beautiful lonely light shows could well be it.."
These words, so warm yet so haunting, flow from the first page to the last, from the first orbit to the sixteenth. After finishing the book, I was astonished to find it was only a hundred or so pages long, yet I felt like I had embarked on a long journey through space and my own soul. My spirit was filled with joy and satisfaction. I immediately turned on my computer to declare this my book of the year.
I hope you can embark on a similar journey and feel like you've received an unexpected gift, a beautiful gift, a fulfilling gift before 2024 ends. Finally, I want to thank Amazon for publishing this book and WeChat Reading for providing AI translation, allowing me to experience the surprise of Orbital and discover Samantha Harvey.
没有评论:
发表评论