M. John Harrison won the 2026 Booker Prize for his novel “The End of Everything”. The British writer received the award at a ceremony at Old Billingsgate in London, along with a cash prize of £50,000.
At the age of 81, Harrison became the oldest recipient of the award. He overtook Margaret Atwood, who was 79 when she won the prize in 2019 for her novel “The Testaments”.
A dystopia about a world after a catastrophe
“The End of Everything” is Harrison’s 13th novel and was published by the independent press Serpent’s Tail. The book follows Philip Tennant and his elderly aunt Marnie as they try to continue their lives on England’s south coast decades after a mysterious catastrophe.
In this world, social norms have been shaken, order has passed into the hands of self-appointed guardians, and strange creatures known as “idgets” interfere with everyday life. Among the surreal details are a plane that has crashed into a garden and a jelly-like mass that begins to speak and give people instructions.
At 198 pages, the novel is the shortest on this year’s shortlist for the award. The book was published in June and reached eighth place on the Times bestseller list.
Unanimous decision by the judges
Mary Beard, chair of the judging panel, described the novel as “the politics of the present seen through the lens of the future”. She said the book “turns the reader upside down, raises a smile and, surprisingly given the subject matter, leaves a faint sense of hope”.
The judges reached a unanimous decision after discussing the six titles on the shortlist. Harrison is the first author to win the Booker who comes from the established science-fiction literary scene. To date, a number of award winners have used science-fiction elements, but their work has not primarily been regarded as belonging to the genre.
For Serpent’s Tail, this is the first victory in the award’s history. The publisher is an independent imprint of Profile Books and won on its fifth nomination.
A writer with six decades of work
M. John Harrison has been publishing for six decades. His best-known novels include “Climbers”, “Nova Swing” and “The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again”. He has received the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Boardman Tasker Prize for mountain literature, and the Goldsmiths Prize for innovation in fiction.
Harrison himself describes the subject of the award-winning novel with the question: “What happens when all our expectations and explanations of the world become an ongoing catastrophe, and yet we still have to build a life?”
Sources: apnews.com, theguardian.com, abc.net.au