Samantha Harvey's 2024 novel Orbital won the first ever climate novel award. The award of £10,000 ($13,240) was organized by a storytelling organization called “Climate Spring” honors the British author's novel that solved the problem.
“Many of us already think that responding to climate is important,” the organizer wrote on the prize website. “But we don't always know how we should respond. The novel can help us imagine what change will look like.”
Situated on the International Space Station, the winning novel explores the day of six human life in space as they speed up the fragile blue planet below.
The award has been for a long time – the idea has been abandoned for more than a decade.
It was in 2014 that Daniel Bloom first presented a set of climate novels of the year on screen. But the “cliff” was quickly forgotten.
This is not because of the lack of potential nominees for such prizes. In his 2015 study, independent scholar Adam Trexler brought together a list of 150 previously published works that may reasonably be classified as climate novels. From the past decade on, I think at least more can be added to the total. The annual flood of influx guarantees annual recognition, not just UK-only awards
The list below includes the winning champion, four other books shortlisted in March, and four other books were included in November.
As always, the description of the title is adjusted based on copies provided by its publisher. When two publication dates are listed, the second is for the publication of paperback.
Track: Samantha Harvey's novel (Grove Atlantic 2023/2024, 224 pages, $17.00 paperback)
A slim novel of epic power, a 2024 Booker Prize winner, one day’s clever snapshot of orbits in the lives of six men and women traveling through space. These astronauts and astronauts (from the United States, Russia, Italy, Britain and Japan) have been selected as one of the last space station missions, and have abandoned their lives to travel at speeds of more than 17,000 miles per hour, under the Earth's reel. We are with them when they see and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of 16 sunrises and sunsets and the bright signs of the Milky Way are breathtaking and surprisingly intimate. A profound and meditative orbit is a touch on our environment and the planet.
So I Roar: Abby Dare's Novels (Dutton 2024, 400 pages, $28.00)
When Tia accidentally hears a soft conversation between her mother – terminally ill, lying in the hospital bed in Port Harcourt, Nigeria's port – the consequences will make her desperately seek a desperate pursuit. It's the beginning of a painful ordeal that will force Tia to make a terrible choice between protecting Adunni (the out of control she attracts or eventually learning the secrets her mother has hidden from her). Adunni will learn that what she calls “loud sounds” is more important than ever, because she must advocate not only saving herself, but all the young women in her hometown. If she succeeds, she may turn Ikati into a place that allows girls to claim their bright future as they deserve and shout out their stories to the world.
“Morning: Tea” novel (Randon House 2024/2025, 320 pages $18.00 paperback)
In the near future, Silvia and her mother finally settled in Morningside, a luxurious tower that collapsed on the island’s city, with Silvia’s aunt Ena serving as principal. Silvia is dissatisfied with her new life because her mother is such a secret to hard work and because the once vibrant city she now lives in is the peninsula of the peninsula. But there is a vacancy in Ena: a man willing to give young girls a glimpse of her demolished home. Silvia is fascinated by the story of Ena and begins to see the world with magical possibilities. She is obsessed with the old woman living in the penthouse. Morning is a novel that tells the stories we tell to understand where we come from and who we want to be.
Short and beautiful: The novel by Roz Dineen (Harry N. Abrams Book 2024, 336 pages, $28.00)
In the land of unsafe air, wildfires, floods, viruses, supply shortages and local terror, Cas raises three children alone in the city. Her husband, Nathaniel, was too willing to go to the doctor in the overseas war. His absence and Cass' isolation put her in a weary but harmonious rhythm with the children. When things get more dangerous in the city, Cass evacuated with the children, first in the mother-in-law's house deep in the countryside, and then in a seemingly harmonious commune along the coast. In this magnetic novel about elasticity, Dinene creates a society that is both unrecognizable and familiar. The result is a convincing portrait for parents through the book of Revelation.
Time Department: Kaliane Bradley's novel (Avid Reader Press 2024/2025, 368 pages, $18.99 paperback)
In the near future, a civil servant gets the salary she dreams of before telling her what she will be doing. Her mission is to work as a “bridge”: to live and monitor with Commander Graham Gore. In history, Commander Gore died on an expedition destined to go to the Arctic in 1845 by Sir John Franklin, so he was a little disoriented to live with an unmarried woman who often showed her calves. By the time the true shape of the project surfaced, the bridge had fallen in love, a consequence she had never imagined. The time part is a primitive fusion of exquisite genres and ideas, Q: What does it mean to defy history? Bradley’s answer proves what we owe each other in a changing world.
Private Ceremony: The Novel by Julia Armfield (Flatiron Books 2024, 304 pages, $27.99)
It has been raining for so long that the land has reshaped itself, and ancient rituals and religions are gradually recovering. Sisters Isla, Irene and Agnes did not speak at some point when their father, an architect who was like him, died. His death provided a new way for the sisters. In the glass house where they grew up, in their father’s most famous works, the sisters reveal the secrets and memories he left behind until their fragile bond is broken by the revelation in the will. But something even more sinister may be developing. Soon, it became clear that the sisters were chosen for a specific purpose, having a destructive effect on their families and the world that was endangered.
Baby on the Water: Chioma Okereke's novel (Quercus Books 2024/2025, 17.99 paperback)
In Makoko, a floating slum on the continent of Lagos, Nigeria, the 19-year-old baby is eager to escape the future her father planned for her. With the scarcity of opportunities, the baby seized the opportunity to join a newly launched drone mapping project aimed at expanding the visibility of the community. Then, her videos at work spread, and the baby found herself having choices she could never imagine – including the possibility of leaving her birthplace representing Makoko on the world stage. But will life outside the lagoon become everything she dreams of? Or is everything she wants always in front of her?
House of Mars: The novel by Natasha Pulley (Published by Bloomsbury 2024/2025, 480 pages, $19.99 paperback)
After an environmental disaster, January was once the principal of the Royal Ballet in London and has become a refugee of Tharsis, a terrain colony on Mars. There, January’s life is determined by his status as a strongman on Earth – a person’s body is not adjusted to a lower gravity and thus poses a danger to those born or attributed to Mars. Job choices, housing and even transportation in January are determined by this second-class status, and now a xenophobic politician named Aubrey Gale is running on a platform that will make the situation worse: Gale wants all Earth Smiths to naturalize, a process that is always disabled and sometimes fatal. Pullwheels weave a story of personal, political and planetary transformation through these threads.
Worthy: Alexis Wright's novel (New Directions 2024, 672 pages, $22.95)
In a small town in northern Australia, mysterious fog clouds bring ecological disasters and ancestors together. A visionary pursues his own holiness as Man Steel seeks the perfect platinum donkey to launch an Aboriginal-owned donkey transport industry that saves the country and the world from fossil fuels. His wife dances, studies butterflies and dreams of sending her family back to China. One of their sons, called Aboriginal Sovereignty, is determined to end it all by walking into the sea. Their other child, Tommyhawk, wanted only to be adopted by Australia's most powerful white women. To be commendable is an epic masterpiece that bents time and reality – crying of anger at oppression, greed and assimilation.
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