Life as you've never seen it before

SIX astronauts have trained for years to cope with the challenges of living packed into a small metal capsule, looping around and around the Earth sixteen times every day.

- BEVERLEY ROOS-MULLER

This book, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, is the winner of last year's Booker prize, and is a joy to read, a short but visually intense hymn to our beautiful planet. Formerly longlisted for the Booker, this is Harvey's fifth novel, and a very fine achievement.

Almost nothing happens in this book - yet it is mesmerising, always moving. We share their journey around the planet in light and dark, the quick days and nights just ninety minutes long, the edges of continents sliding past, the vast expanses of ocean, the deserts and mountains and shorelines.

What cannot be seen from the space capsule is people. Humans are too small to be visible; it is only at night that the clusters of brightly illuminated cities and towns indicate that people are living here, often in great numbers.. but, as the arc of the sunlight moves across these continents, we disappear once more.