At 81 years old, M. John Harrison has secured the Booker Prize and its 50,000 British pounds, worth $95,000, becoming the oldest-ever winner of the Booker Prize.
The English author won the prize for his dystopian novel The End of Everything, which follows a man and his aunt living in the south of England decades after a mysterious invasion causes societal collapse. Harrison first drew inspiration for the project during the 2008 global financial crisis.
The narrative begins when a scavenger named Phillip Tennent discovers a bundle on the beach. He carries this biological gadget
artefact, discarded by the invading iGhetti, to the residence of his artist aunt Marnie, whose memory is fading.
Chair of the judges Mary Beard described the winning novel as the politics of now seen through the lens of the future
. Beard also noted that the judging panel hopes the shortlist will make you laugh, scream and change the way you see the world
.
She further remarked that old rules will not matter anymore, praising the book as a work that turns the reader upside down, prompts a wry smile, and surprisingly leaves a twinge of optimism despite its subject matter.
Also contending for the 2026 prize were works like Douglas Stuart’s John of John, Elizabeth Strout’s The Things We Never Say, Rebecca Perry’s May We Feed the King, Luke Kennard’s Black Bag, and Marlon James’s The Disappearers. Harrison previously served as a judge for the award in 2022, the year Shehan Karunatilaka won for his political satire The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida.
The judging panel included Booker-shortlisted writer Patricia Lockwood and Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker. ABC Arts characterized Harrison as a writer emerging from science fiction roots to craft a piece that defies traditional classifications. Wood noted it is interesting to consider whether the book is science fiction or whether the author is a thinker who came through the world of science fiction to create something that defies categorization.
Harrison has been writing for 60 years, with his first short story published in 1966. His previous work includes the 2006 novel Nova Swing, which won both the Arthur C. Clarke and Philip K. Dick Awards for science fiction. His latest victory demonstrates how the Booker Prize has expanded to become more inclusive of genre fiction.
Harrison stated that he avoided writing a typical science fiction novel
during the creative process. Every time I was tempted to make a rationale, I would say to myself, ‘If you put an explanation here, you will be writing science fiction,’ and that’s the last thing I wanted to do,
Harrison explained ahead of the announcement.
Beard emphasized that the judges did not intentionally set out to reward speculative fiction.
Critical reception for the novel includes a Booker Prize Judge citation calling it A book not just about everything but about now
. The New York Times Book Review described the work as Thoroughly original . . . a masterly exercise in restraint, unsettling beauty and elliptical writing that can enlighten even when it obfuscates
.
The Chicago Review of Books named it among its 12 Must-Read Books of October, writing that it is Lyrical, challenging, and often balancing on the knife’s edge between humorous and absolutely gut punching. . . It’s unlike anything I’ve read before
.
The Financial Times characterized it as This is a formidable book: dusky, casually horrifying, unexpectedly compassionate
, while the Literary Review called it A work of uncanny beauty, tender and terrifying in equal parts
.
Helen Macdonald wrote in the UK Observer that reading the novel hit me like a truck. . . It’s a novel that destabilises you—quite savagely—in the course of its reading. But you’re absolutely not walking away. You’re locked in, and you’re having the time of your life
.
The Telegraph noted that Harrison isn’t weirder than most other writers, just better. Reading The End of Everything, you feel you’re not so much reading as dreaming
, and the Guardian stated that the book elucidates humanity’s disintegrating existence with strange clarity
.
Additional praise came from China Miéville, who called Harrison A towering genius of modern fiction
, and Robert Macfarlane, who described him as Among the most brilliant novelists writing today
.
Olivia Laing stated, No one alive can write sentences as he can. . . Harrison is without peer as a chronicler of the fraught, unsteady state we’re in
. Finally, the New Statesman noted that M. John Harrison is the closest thing we have to a present-day Wyndham or Ballard
.