British author M. John Harrison has won the 2026 Booker Prize for The End of Everything, becoming the oldest winner in the prize's history at 81. He was named the winner at a ceremony in London on Monday night.
Judges chaired by author Mary Beard agreed unanimously on the winner after a day of debating the six shortlisted novels.
What is the book about? The satirical, post-apocalyptic novel follows Philip, a man who searches for artifacts along the Kent coast, and his aunt Marnie, as a slow, shape-shifting invasion by the iGhetti unfolds. It is Harrison's 13th novel.
Harrison explained that the book asks what happens when our expectations and explanations of the world become an ongoing disaster, yet we still have to make a life.
Booker Prize Foundation chief executive Gaby Wood noted that Harrison is the first Booker winner to emerge from the science fiction world. He previously won both the Arthur C. Clarke and Philip K. Dick awards for Nova Swing.
A message of hope: Beard said that despite its subject, the novel leaves readers with "a twinge of optimism." For readers of faith, that is a reminder that hope and perseverance can endure even in stories about the end of the world.
The Booker Prize honors the best fiction published in the U.K. and Ireland. The winner receives £50,000 (about $67,000). Marlon James' The Disappearers and Elizabeth Strout's The Things We Never Say were also shortlisted.
