British author M John Harrison, 81, has won the 2026 Booker Prize for his post-apocalyptic novel The End of Everything, becoming the oldest recipient in the award’s history and the first science fiction writer to win the prestigious literary honor.
Harrison received the £50,000 prize and trophy at a ceremony held at Old Billingsgate in London on Monday, 9 November. He overtook Margaret Atwood, who was 79 when she jointly won the award in 2019 for The Testaments.
The Booker Prize judging panel unanimously selected The End of Everything after a day of discussions among the six shortlisted novels. Mary Beard, chair of the judges, described it as a book that challenges readers while offering an unexpected sense of optimism.
The novel, published by Serpent’s Tail, is set on the Kent coast a few decades in the future, following an unexplained disaster. It centers on Phillip Tennent and his ageing aunt Marnie as they struggle to survive amid the presence of mysterious, shape-shifting beings known as the iGhetti.
At 198 pages, it was the shortest novel on this year's shortlist and Harrison's first Booker Prize nomination.
Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, said previous winners had explored science fiction, but Harrison was the first winner to emerge from the established science fiction community. She described the victory as a historic achievement for a writer whose career spans six decades.
Harrison, born in Rugby, Warwickshire, in 1945, began publishing stories in 1965. His previous works include Climbers, which won the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature in 1989; Nova Swing, which received the Arthur C Clarke Award in 2007; and The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, which won the Goldsmiths Prize in 2020.
The 2026 shortlist also included The Disappearers by Marlon James, Black Bag by Luke Kennard, May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry, The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout and John of John by Douglas Stuart. Each shortlisted author received £2,500.
The win also marks the first Booker Prize victory for Harrison's publisher, Serpent’s Tail, an imprint of Profile Books, following five previous nominations.
The Booker Prize recognizes the best work of long-form fiction written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland.