Booker-winner M. John Harrison’s dystopian satire “probes the limits of human understanding".
The seasoned writer with a career spanning 60 years has made history for many reasons, including the fact that his win is a shout out to science-fiction writers and writing everywhere.
The End of Everything is published in the United Kingdom by Serpent’s Tail, a London-based independent publisher.
British writer M. John Harrison has been awarded the 2026 Booker Prize for his science-fiction novel The End of Everything. At 81, Harrison is the oldest author to win the Booker in the prize’s history. This is his 13th novel. The seasoned writer with a career spanning 60 years has made history for many reasons, including the fact that his win is a shout out to science-fiction writers and writing everywhere.
Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, said in a statement that several past Booker Prize recipients have borrowed facets of science fiction in their work. “But Harrison is the first Booker winner to have emerged from the bona fide science-fiction world. He is a genuinely original thinker, a genre-defying writer who takes ideas seriously." Harrison’s Booker win is also a testament to the tenacity and editorial judgement of independent publishers. The End of Everything is published in the United Kingdom by Serpent’s Tail, a London-based independent publisher specialising in literary fiction, translated works and cultural non-fiction.
The End of Everything is an unsettling dystopian tale set in the near future that plays out in a Britain that has been ravaged by a disaster caused by unnamed entities. An edge-of-the-seat adventure, an incisive comment on big tech and its grip on our lives, Harrison’s dystopian satire “probes the limits of human understanding”. In the fictional world Harrison expertly builds, government no longer functions, law and order is being manhandled by vigilantes, and social norms have been completely wrecked. People carry on, unable to properly comprehend what has come to pass, “trying to live as if nothing has happened”.
The Booker Prize is awarded for the best work of fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the United Kingdom and/or Ireland between October 1, 2025 and September 30, 2026. The End of Everything was chosen as the winner from a shortlist of six books. The judging panel, headed by well-known classicist and writer Mary Beard, reportedly spent an entire day debating the shortlisted titles and unanimously agreed to award the prize to Harrison’s novel. In a statement, the judges described The End of Everything as “a book that turns you upside down, raises a wry smile—and surprisingly, given the subject matter, leaves you with a twinge of optimism… This is the politics of now seen through the lens of the future.”
In an interview with the Booker Prize team, Harrison said that he has definitely been inspired by current affairs. "What happens when all of our expectations and explanations of the world become an ongoing disaster, but we still have to make a life?" he asked.
Critics have called his novel both baffling and brilliant. British speculative-fiction writer and winner of the 2026 Goldsmiths Prize China Miéville has hailed the book as a “visionary and brilliant investigation of anxious times”. Harrison, “a towering genius, elucidates humanity’s fragile relationship with reality and collapse” he said. Harrison is the author of, among others, the Viriconium stories, a sequence of science-fiction short stories and novels; The Centauri Device, Climbers, The Course of the Heart, The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, Signs of Life, Light and Nova Swing. He has been honoured with the Boardman Tasker Prize, the James Tiptree Jr Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Goldsmiths Prize.
