01966cam a2200217 i 4500 11262 IN-BhIIT 20250922165952.0 230816s2023 nyu 000 1 eng 9781529922936 (pbk.) IN-BhIIT eng 823 HAR/O Harvey, Samantha, Author. 26451 Orbital / Samantha Harvey. New Delhi : Vintage, 2024. 136 pages ; ill. ; 19 cm "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"-- Novel (English) 8033 GEN 14905 14905 0 0 ddc 0 0 GEN CLIITBBS CLIITBBS 2025-03-07 33 374.25 0 823 HAR/O 11262 2025-03-07 00:00:00 499.00 2025-03-07 GEN