M. John Harrison, 81, wins the 2026 Booker Prize for "The End of Everything"

English author M. John Harrison won the 2026 Booker Prize for his novel "The End of Everything" at a ceremony at Old Billingsgate in London on Monday evening, 9 November, per Ada Derana and Frontline. This piece is as of the evening of 10 November.

The win

At 81, Harrison is the oldest winner of the prize, surpassing Margaret Atwood, who was 79 when she shared the 2019 award with Bernardine Evaristo (Ada Derana). The prize is £50,000, approximately ₹62 lakh, per Hindustan Times. Last year's winner, David Szalay, presented the trophy (Evening Standard). Harrison judged the prize in 2022, Ada Derana notes, joining a few authors who judged and later won.

The judging panel was chaired by the classicist Mary Beard and included Jarvis Cocker, Rebecca Liu, Patricia Lockwood and Raymond Antrobus (Ada Derana). Beard said the decision was unanimous and called the book "an apocalypse novel with a twinge of optimism". She also described it as "the politics of now seen through the lens of the future" (Hindustan Times). The Evening Standard reports Beard saying the judges spent a whole day debating the six shortlisted novels.

The book and the field

Ada Derana says it is Harrison's 13th work of fiction and the shortest on the shortlist, at 198 pages, set in the near future after a worldwide catastrophe. Hindustan Times describes a post-apocalyptic Britain along the Kent coast, and Frontline says the story follows a beachcomber and his aunt and echoes concerns about artificial intelligence. Asked what he wanted readers to take from it, Harrison said at the end of things there may be "some kind of relief" (Frontline).

Hindustan Times and The Times of India both say he is the first writer from the established science fiction community to win. The Times of India adds that it was his first Booker nomination and that every judge voted for him. Frontline lists the other finalists as Douglas Stuart for "John of John", Marlon James for "The Disappearers", Elizabeth Strout for "The Things We Never Say", Luke Kennard for "Black Bag" and Rebecca Perry for "May We Feed the King".