A slim science fiction novel that looks at our “precious and precarious” world through the eyes of six astronauts on the International Space Station has won the 2024 Booker Prize. Samantha Harvey, author of “Orbital,” took home the award on Tuesday.

The book focuses on one day in the lives of the astronauts on the ISS, where they discuss fears, dreams and the fragility of human life.

“Compact yet beautifully expansive, Orbital invites us to observe the magnificence of the Earth as we reflect on the individual and collective value of every human life,” the Booker Prize judges wrote. “All year we have been celebrating fiction that embodies ideas rather than declaiming on issues, not finding answers but changing the question of what we set out to explore. Our unanimity on Orbital recognizes its beauty and ambition. It reflects Harvey’s extraordinary intensity of attention to the precious and precarious world we share.”

“Orbital” enjoys both popular and critical success. The awards website notes that it sold more copies than the last three Booker Prize winners combined before winning.

Harvey, one of five women among the six authors on the Booker Prize shortlist, is the first woman to win the prize since 2019. And her book, at 136 pages, is the second shortest book to ever win the prize. In an interview on the awards website, she described “Orbital” as a space pastoral and said she wanted to write a realistic, rather than fantastical, version of humans in low Earth orbit.

“Can I evoke the beauty of that vantage point with the care of the nature writer?” she said. “Could I write about amazement?”

Viewing images of Earth’s orbit from the ISS helped inspire the book, Harvey told NPR, including the 16 sunsets and sunrises the astronauts in her book experience during the day she writes about.

Harvey almost didn’t finish the book at all, she told the BBC. After writing a few thousand words, she said, she lost her nerve. She said she felt like she was in space based on the experience of the select group of astronauts who had written about it firsthand. “Who am I to do this?” she asked. But she eventually picked up the idea again, with award-winning results.

The prize, worth approximately $53,000, and the trophy were presented to Harvey at a ceremony in London by Paul Lynch, the 2023 winner of “Prophet Song.” An emotional Harvey covered her face with both hands after her book was announced as the winner.

“We were told not to swear in our speech,” she said from the podium, “so here goes my speech. It was just one curse word, 150 times.” Harvey further thanked her family, publisher and agents.

“Looking at Earth from space is a bit like a child looking into a mirror and realizing for the first time that the person in the mirror is herself,” she said in her speech. “What we do to the earth, we do to ourselves, and what we do to life on earth, human or otherwise, we do to ourselves.” She dedicated the prize to those who are committed to the earth and peace.

‘Orbital’ beat out five other shortlisted titles: ‘Hero’ by Anne Michaels, ‘Creation Lake’ by Rachel Kushner, ‘James’ by Percival Everett, ‘The Safekeep’ by Yael van der Wouden and ‘Stone Yard Devotional’ by Charlotte Wood.