Samantha Harvey and Téa Obreht are among the writers in the running for the inaugural Climate fiction prize.

Harvey’s Orbital, her Booker-winning novel set on the International Space Station, and Obreht’s novel The Morningside, about refugees from an unnamed country, have both been shortlisted for the new prize, which aims to “celebrate the most inspiring novels tackling the climate crisis”.

Also in contention for the £10,000 award are And So I Roar by Abi Daré and Briefly Very Beautiful by Roz Dineen. In Daré’s novel, a sequel to her internationally bestselling debut The Girl with the Louding Voice, 14-year-old Adunni is living in Lagos, having escaped the rural village in which she was a victim of abuse and enslavement. The novel exposes “the harsh realities faced by women and girls worldwide, underscored by intersectional environmental issues”, according to judge Tori Tsui. “It’s a tough but essential read.”

Meanwhile former Times Literary Supplement journalist Dineen’s debut, about a mother looking after her three small children in a city rocked by global catastrophe, was described by judge Nicola Chester as “a haunting, fierce narrative of love, beauty and the desire to live through an accelerating crisis and a world on fire”.

Kaliane Bradley’s novel The Ministry of Time, which has also been longlisted for this year’s Women’s prize for fiction, completes the shortlist, and was praised by the Climate fiction prize’s chair of judges Madeleine Bunting as “climate fiction which manages to be both surprising and still make its point powerfully”.

Described by Guardian reviewer Ella Risbridger as “50% sci-fi thriller and 50% romcom”, The Ministry of Time is a love story about a disaffected civil servant working in a near-future London and Commander Graham Gore, first lieutenant of Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated expedition to the Arctic. Though it contains “vast themes” – the British empire, the refugee crisis and the Cambodian genocide among others – they are “handled deftly and in deference to character and plot”, Risbridger wrote.

Journalist Bunting, climate justice activist Tsui and author Chester were joined on the judging panel by birdwatcher and writer David Lindo and the Hay festival’s sustainability director Andy Fryers.

The shortlist was whittled down from a longlist of nine that also included Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright, The Mars House by Natasha Pulley, Water Baby by Chioma Okereke and Private Rites by Julia Armfield.

The five chosen books “promote and celebrate the power and joy of storytelling, to show us how we might see ourselves anew in the light of the climate crisis, and how we might respond to and rise to its challenges with hope and inventiveness”, said Chester.

Launched in June 2024 at the Hay literary festival, the Climate fiction prize will be awarded annually to “the best novel-length work of fiction published in the UK engaging with the climate crisis”. It is supported by Climate Spring, a global organisation dedicated to transforming how the climate crisis is represented in film, TV, mainstream entertainment and popular culture.

The winner will be announced on 14 May.