Women’s Words Shape the 2024 Booker Prize

The Booker Prize is a literary award celebrating the year’s best English-language fiction novel. This annual prize is known for launching writers into international acclaim and spotlighting groundbreaking storytelling. 

The 2024 Booker Prize shortlist is packed with female representation, marking a shift in the prize’s 55-year history, according to BBC News. Five of the six nominees are women authors from different backgrounds, resulting in writing laced with diverse voices and unique struggles.

The 2024 Booker Prize has been awarded to Samantha Harvey for “Orbital.” In a year dominated by female authors, the prestigious prize recognized Harvey’s masterful depiction of life beyond Earth.

The shortlist was comprised of “Orbital” by Samantha Harvey, “Creation Lake” by Rachel Kushner, “Held” by Anne Michaels, “The Safekeep” by Yael van der Wouden, “Stone Yard Devotional” by Charlotte Wood and “James” by Percival Everett. 

Winner of the Booker Prize: “Orbital” by Samantha Harvey

Set aboard the International Space Station, Harvey’s “Orbital” captures 24 hours of existential reflections through the lens of six international women astronauts. 

Harvey takes the reader on a 136-page journey with astronauts as they circle the Earth. In their rotation, the astronauts cope with the fact it’ll be their final mission before the space program is dismantled. 

“Orbital” is a book with a poetic meditation on the fragility of the environment and the collective human experience of fixing it. The astronauts grapple with their earthly attachments and daily routines in the space station, unable to navigate their lives.

Harvey floats around a vision of companionship on isolated grounds. In short verses, she pans a camera into the astronauts’ lives and exposes their feelings of hurt, longing and hope. By the end of the book, a message is clear — even in a vacuum, love still exists.

“Creation Lake” by Rachel Kushner

Kushner’s “Creation Lake” is a humorous dive into the world of espionage and political subterfuge. The novel follows Sadie Smith, an enigmatic and seductive American agent who invades an anarchist community in rural France. 

While on her mission to incite revolution, she stumbles upon Bruno Lacombe — a mysterious, elusive figure advocating for a return to ancient ways rather than modern revolt. 

At first, Sadie manipulates Bruno to aid her mission, but as they work together, her sense of control is challenged and her hatred turns into fascination. 

“Creation Lake” is a thrilling exploration of power, identity and resistance, ultimately reflecting the allure and consequences of radical ideologies. 

“The Safekeep” by Yael van der Wouden 

In “The Safekeep” by van der Wouden, the serene backdrop of the 1961 Dutch countryside is a facade — the novel circles around intense psychological drama between two women, Isabel and Eva. 

Isabel is a solitary being, living alone in her dead mother’s rural home. Her strict routine is disrupted when Eva, her brother’s girlfriend, arrives at the house uninvited. In contrast to Isabel’s uptight nature, Eva is free-spirited. 

With Eva’s arrival, objects go missing from the house, and tensions escalate. Isabel’s paranoia transforms into an unsettling attraction toward Eva. In their time spent together, Isabel comes to a startling revelation about the house and its past secrets from World War II.

“The Safekeep” houses themes of queer longing by challenging the norms of its historical setting, creating an intimate atmosphere. The end of “The Safekeep” makes one thing clear — a house is never just a house. 

“Stone Yard Devotional” by Charlotte Wood

A book about forgiveness, grief and moral ambiguity, “Stone Yard Devotional” by Wood defines what makes something good. The book follows an unnamed woman who retreats from urban life and a crumbling marriage to join a small religious community in Australia’s Monaro plains.

She doesn’t believe in God, yet she’s drawn to the rhythms of monastic life as she’s haunted by her memories of her mother’s early death. Her peace is interrupted by three events — a relentless mouse plague, the discovery of a nun’s skeletal remains and a visit by a mysterious stranger who brings painful fragments of her past.

Wood delves into loss and unresolved grief as the woman grapples with questions of goodness and redemption.

“Held” by Anne Michaels 

Michaels tells a narrative of moving through passages of time to find the message of what it means to be human navigating through pain. “Held” explores the consequences of war in addition to the mysteries surrounding human desires and connection. 

The novel follows John in nonlinear timelines as he navigates his time serving in war, and the aftermath of the psychological trauma laced with it. 

“Held” introduces John in 1917, lying motionless on a battlefield. Snow around him falls and he drifts in and out of memory. Michaels then time shifts the narration to 1920, with John going to North Yorkshire. 

John is haunted by the scars of war both physically and emotionally. In his time in North Yorkshire, he reunites with Helena — an artist who attempts to repaint his fractured life base. John, with his inability to move past his war ghosts, tries to fall in love again with his fragmented self. 

Through “Held,” Michaels paints a portrait of desire — love is a tapestry of luminous moments even in spots of darkness. The reader, alongside John, tries to find meaning in the finite message of life.

“James” by Percival Everett

Percival Everett flipped the classic Mark Twain adventure “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” to write “James,” offering a new perspective through the eyes of Jim, an enslaved man who was a secondary figure in the original Twain novel. 

Everett begins his retelling with Jim’s determination to escape the reality of being sold away from his family. He starts on a solitary path to Jackson Island. Through his unique adventure, Jim tries to escape the Free States.

His plan intersects with Huck Finn’s, a wayward boy who staged his own escape toward the Mississippi River. From there, they’re forced to collaborate to find freedom in the midst of fear. 

“James” recenters Jim’s experience, giving him agency, intellect and emotional complexity — qualities ignored in the original text. Jim confronts the internal struggles of a man fighting for the right to be seen. Everett writes about freedom, identity and the human cost of oppression.

Learn more about the shortlisted books through the Booker Prize website.