'Orbital'
This book is on the Booker longlist. It's a fiction book, but is packed with geography.
It's about four astronauts and two cosmonauts in the International Space Station.
The author said of the book that she wanted to write a 'space pastoral'
The book follows one day, and the orbits they trace over the world. In between their routine jobs and exercise, we hear about them and their families and their thoughts as they stare down on the earth below - tracking the path of a super-typhoon with their privileged view of the world below.
There are some truly wonderful passages, and it's definitely a geography book.
The section here is part of a chapter - they are all very short and this helps you subdivide the book if you want to prolong the reading of it and savour each page - which looks at the point where the astronauts and cosmonauts realise that they can see the hand of people everywhere on the planet which is described as "a landscape of want" - something I've talked about before.
It also links with another story I've told many times before: Bill Anders, 'Earthrise' and the impact of the experience of being in space on those who have to literally come back down to Earth.
I've just finished it and it comes very highly recommended.
My copy was published by Vintage and purchased from Topping Books in Ely - support your local independent bookshops!
Paperback, 144pp
ISBN: 978-1529922936
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