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Orbital : a novel / Samantha Harvey.
Van Pelt Library PR6108.A7875 O73 2023
By Request
Athenaeum of Philadelphia - Fiction Harvey Orbital
By Request
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Harvey, Samantha, 1975- Author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Space--Fiction.
- Space.
- Astronauts--Fiction.
- Astronauts.
- Space flights--Fiction.
- Space flights.
- Space stations--Fiction.
- Space stations.
- Genre:
- Fiction
- Science fiction
- Novels
- Science fiction.
- Novels.
- Physical Description:
- 207 pages : chart ; 20 cm
- Edition:
- First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition.
- Place of Publication:
- New York, NY : Grove Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, 2023.
- Summary:
- "A singular new novel from Betty Trask Prize-winner Samantha Harvey, Orbital is an eloquent meditation on space and life on our planet through the eyes of six astronauts circling the earth in twenty-four hours. A slender novel of epic power, Orbital deftly snapshots a day in the lives of six women and men hurtling through space--not toward 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 warp speed 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 a gift--a moving elegy to our humanity, environment, and planet"-- Provided by publisher.
- Notes:
- "First published in 2023 in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Penguin Random House UK."--Title page verso.
- Local Notes:
- Athenaeum copy: Green fund bookplate.
- Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.
- Other Format:
- Online version: Harvey, Samantha. Orbital.
- ISBN:
- 9780802161543
- 0802161545
- OCLC:
- 1394997200
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