After reading more than 150 books over seven months, the judges voted unanimously in favour of Samantha Harvey’s Orbital – which pulled them as far away as possible from our planet

In January, a box of books was delivered to my house, the first of many to arrive, with a steadiness that would at times feel overwhelming. I was about to spend the year as a Booker judge.

All my life I have dreamed of having swathes of time filled with nothing but reading. Yet as I stared at that first tranche of books, my overriding feeling was apprehension. Awarding a prize with the power to transform literary history, as well as the winner’s career, isn’t a task to take lightly. Plus, I’d been warned that each judge would be required to read more than 150 books over seven months; a diet, it seemed to me, with a high chance of leaving me feeling force-fed and unable to stomach reading a novel ever again.