British author M. John Harrison has won the 2026 Booker Prize for The End of Everything, becoming the oldest winner in the award’s history at 81.
The judges unanimously selected the 198-page dystopian satire from a six-book shortlist, and Harrison received £50,000 at a ceremony in London on November 9.
Set on the Kent coast in a near-future Britain after an unexplained catastrophe, The End of Everything follows beachcomber Phillip Tennent and his aunt Marnie as they navigate a society in which government and social order have largely broken down.
The story also introduces mysterious, shape-shifting entities known as the iGhetti while deliberately withholding clear explanations for the disaster.
Mary Beard, the classicist and broadcaster who chaired the five-member judging panel, said the book was “the politics of now seen through the lens of the future”.
The Booker Prize Foundation said the judges spent a full day debating the six finalists before reaching a unanimous decision.
Harrison beat former Booker winners Marlon James and Douglas Stuart, as well as Elizabeth Strout, Luke Kennard and Rebecca Perry.
Harrison has spent six decades writing fiction that crosses literary and speculative genres, and has resisted being confined to science fiction as a label.
Booker Prize Foundation chief executive Gaby Wood said he was “the first Booker winner to have emerged from the bona fide SF world”, a narrower formulation than describing the winning novel itself as the prize’s first work of science fiction.
The win also brought Harrison back to the Booker from the other side of the judging table.
Harrison served as a judge for the Booker Prize in 2022, according to the foundation’s author profile, before winning the award four years later with his 13th novel.
Harrison surpassed Margaret Atwood as the prize’s oldest winner.
Atwood was 79 when she jointly won the 2019 Booker Prize for The Testaments.
Last year’s Booker Prize went to David Szalay for Flesh.