Orbital follows a day in the life of sixteen astronauts traveling above the earth on the International Space Station. In lyrical, almost hypnotic prose, Harvey follows the twelve astronauts and four cosmonauts as they conduct experiments, track a monster typhoon bearing down on the Philippines, and interact with one another in achingly human ways.
For Harvey, though, plot is mostly irrelevant. What's of far more interest is how seamlessly she immerses the reader in the experience of floating weightlessly through space, and how heartbreaking it is to be so far away from loved ones back on earth.
In writing that's both rhapsodic and deeply moving, the author achieves something rarely encountered in modern fiction. I came away from Orbital looking at our own lives on this planet in a fresh new way.
Winner of the 2024 Hawthornden Prize Shortlisted for the 2024 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction Shortlisted for the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction
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 24 hours
"Ravishingly beautiful." — Joshua Ferris, New York Times
A slender novel of epic power, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of…
In the tumult of an election year, Prophet Song couldn't be timelier. Sadly, this fictional account of a democratic republic's slide into dictatorship requires no great leap of imagination. Without offering any explanation for how this dire situation originated, Lynch has made the story of a single family's harrowing experience with martial law seem completely credible.
The writing is focused, propulsive, and nearly suffocating at times--resembling with uncanny precision what it must be like struggling to survive in a totalitarian state. Lynch makes no allowance for the terrible events, nor does he offer readers an "out" from what that family endures.
Prophet Song isn't an easy read, and there are times when the reader is tempted to look away from what lies ahead. Still, the protagonist, Eilish Stack, is so compellingly single-minded and unflappable, we can't help but sympathize with her plight. Lynch tells her story in sentences long and short that cascade over one another like ocean waves, never letting up or offering relief. It's what makes Prophet Song such a powerful novel, well deserving of the 2023 Man Booker Prize
WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023 • NATIONAL BESTSELLER
"A prophetic masterpiece." — Ron Charles, Washington Post
On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police on her step. They have arrived to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.
Ireland is falling apart, caught in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny. As the life she knows and the ones she loves disappear before her eyes, Eilish must contend with the dystopian logic of her new, unraveling country. How far will she…
Humbert Humbert, the tortured protagonist of this timeless novel, is a repellent pedophile. What can we do but condemn the immorality of his pursuit of a twelve-year-old girl (“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul”) and eventual success in snaring the not-so-innocent girl in his deceitful web?
At the same time, Nabokov pulls out all the stops and creates in his deplorable narrator a charm and vocabulary that can't help but draw avid readers into the story. The subterfuge involved suggests also what life must have been like for gay men and women in the 1950's era, forced in many circumstances to hide their nature and pretend to be "normal."
What surprised me most upon re-reading this classic work was how funny it is, especially in the early pages when Humbert so desperately seeks to make Lolita submit to his will. If there was ever a case of "be careful what you wish for," it comes when these misbegotten lovers embark on a cross-country road trip, and Humbert comes to understand exactly what he's dealing with. For a novel published in the late 1950s, Lolita holds up shockingly well.
'Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of my tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.'
Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged, frustrated college professor. In love with his landlady's twelve-year-old daughter Lolita, he'll do anything to possess her. Unable and unwilling to stop himself, he is prepared to commit any crime to get what he wants.
Is he in love or insane? A silver-tongued poet or a pervert? A tortured soul or a monster? Or is he all…
The Confessions of Gabriel Ash, a literary Cold War thriller with echoes of John Le Carré and A Gentleman in Moscow, alternates between the glittery backdrop of 1980s Manhattan and the sinister grottoes of Eastern Europe. When disgraced UN diplomat Gabriel Ash is recalled to his adopted homeland deep behind the Iron Curtain, he uncovers a shocking truth from his past and confronts new life-and-death consequences growing out of a career of deception and lies. The story UN Ambassador Gabriel Ash must tell—in a voice that’s sardonic, self-delusional, and uniquely his own—will result either in his release from captivity or the loss of his life.
