British author M. John Harrison won the 2026 Booker Prize in London for “The End of Everything.”
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M. John Harrison won the 2026 Booker Prize for fiction on Monday, taking home the 50,000-pound ($67,000) award at a ceremony in London.
The judges said “The End of Everything,” Harrison’s 13th novel, combines “huge ambition” with “extraordinary, expert writing,” making it the first science fiction work to win the prize.
Harrison’s satirical dystopian novel is set on England’s Channel coast in the near future after an unspecified calamity shatters society and brings an influx of enigmatic alien entities to Britain.
The story centres on a beachcomber who lives with his gun-toting aunt and discovers a puzzling, shape-shifting artifact on the shore.
Asked what he wanted to convey to readers, Harrison said: “It's a grim world, and it'll keep on being grim. And it's weird. But at the end of things there may be some kind of — I wouldn't say hope, or closure, but there might be some kind of relief.”
Historian Mary Beard, who chaired the judging panel, said the book shows “the politics of now seen through the lens of the future,” describing a society “undergoing a catastrophe that they don’t really understand.” She added, “What he does is to say, when the catastrophe comes, you won’t know what’s happening,” and that the narrative includes moments where “you, the reader, are with the characters in not fully understanding.”
Harrison beat five other finalists, including previous Booker winners Douglas Stuart and Marlon James, and Pulitzer Prize laureate Elizabeth Strout.
The Booker Prize Foundation’s chief executive, Gaby Wood, said the prize has removed references to “literary fiction” from its materials, adding that “all fiction is literary.”
Beard said the judges met for four or five hours and that the decision was unanimous, with “a lot of discussion and disagreement and debate” but no one leaving.
Founded in 1969, the Booker Prize is open to English-language novels from any country published in the U.K. and Ireland.
Last year’s winner was “Flesh” by Hungarian-British writer David Szalay, and the 2026 win made Harrison, 81, the oldest Booker winner at two years older than Margaret Atwood when she won in 2019. “The End of Everything” was described as his 13th novel.
Beard said the award was “not a lifetime achievement award,” and that the judges viewed the winning book as one that had earned it. She also said the judges included poet Raymond Antrobus and singer Jarvis Cocker from the band Pulp.
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