M. John Harrison has won the Booker Prize 2026 for his novel The End of Everything, becoming the oldest winner in the prize’s history at 81. The satirical dystopian novel, the first work of science fiction to take the prestigious literary award, was announced as the winner at a ceremony at Old Billingsgate in London on Monday 9 November.
Booker Prize 2026: a unanimous choice
The judging panel, chaired by historian, writer and broadcaster Mary Beard, chose Harrison’s novel unanimously after spending a whole day debating the six remarkable novels on this year’s shortlist. Beard was adamant that the choice was no lifetime achievement award, praising the book’s huge ambition and extraordinary, expert writing.
Harrison receives the £50,000 prize, about $67,000, and a trophy presented by last year’s winner, David Szalay. The prize, founded in 1969, is open to English-language novels from any country published in the United Kingdom and Ireland. At 81, Harrison surpasses Margaret Atwood, who was 79 when she jointly won the prize in 2019 for The Testaments.
What is The End of Everything about?
At 198 pages, The End of Everything was the shortest novel on this year’s shortlist. The satirical dystopian novel follows a beachcomber, Phillip Tennent, and his pistol-toting aunt, Marnie, as they navigate life on a near-future Kent coast in the fictional English seaside town of Dalston-on-Sea, some years after the arrival of the iGhetti, mysterious entities whose origins, motives and even physical existence remain uncertain.
The judges said the novel’s themes of catastrophe and apocalypse chime with uneasy times. It is Harrison’s 13th work of fiction and his first Booker nomination, in a writing career spanning 60 years. His earlier novel The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again won the Goldsmiths Prize in 2020.
The Booker Prize trophy beside a stack of books. The prize was founded in 1969 and is open to English-language novels published in the UK and Ireland.
The shortlist Harrison beat
Harrison beat five other finalists, including the betting market’s favourites, two former winners: Marlon James, shortlisted for The Disappearers, and Douglas Stuart, shortlisted for John of John. The other finalists were Luke Kennard for Black Bag, Rebecca Perry for May We Feed the King and Pulitzer Prize laureate Elizabeth Strout for The Things We Never Say.
The winner was selected from 163 submissions that were narrowed down to a 13-book longlist and the six finalists, announced in September. The judging panel alongside Beard comprised poet Raymond Antrobus, musician and broadcaster Jarvis Cocker, journalist Rebecca Liu and novelist Patricia Lockwood.
FAKTA
- M. John Harrison won the Booker Prize 2026 for The End of Everything, announced on 9 November 2026 at Old Billingsgate in London.
- At 81, Harrison is the oldest winner in the prize’s history, passing Margaret Atwood, who was 79 in 2019.
- The prize is worth £50,000, about $67,000, and the judges’ decision was unanimous.
- The novel is 198 pages long, the shortest on this year’s shortlist, and the first science-fiction novel to win the Booker.
- It is the first Booker win for publisher Serpent’s Tail, an imprint of independent press Profile Books, and its fifth nomination.
- Harrison was selected from 163 submissions, a 13-book longlist and six finalists.
A first for the publisher and for science fiction
The win is the first Booker Prize for The End of Everything’s publisher, Serpent’s Tail, an imprint of independent press Profile Books, and its fifth nomination for the prize. In the United States the novel was published last month by Riverhead Books.
Critics have described the book as enthralling and exasperating in equal measure, a shrewd, funny and frequently baffling novel that refuses easy categorisation. That refusal, the judges suggested, is part of its power: the shortest, least categorisable and most profoundly destabilising book on the shortlist won the day.
