Good newsM. John Harrison, 81, Becomes Oldest Booker Winner and First From Science Fiction
M. John Harrison won the £50,000 Booker Prize for The End of Everything, a unanimous choice of the judges. At 81 he is the oldest winner in the prize's history and the first to come from the science fiction world.
This story runs on the good side only. The biggest stories of the day are told on both sides.
Sixty years after he started writing, M. John Harrison has won the Booker Prize. The British author, 81, took the £50,000 award on Monday evening in London for his novel The End of Everything, according to the BBC. He is now the oldest winner in the prize’s history, passing Margaret Atwood. He is also the first winner to have come out of the science fiction world, according to the Booker Prize Foundation’s chief executive, Gaby Wood, as reported by NPR.
A career that waited
Harrison began publishing in the 1960s. The End of Everything is his 13th novel, and he has also written five short story collections and an anti-memoir. Much of his career has been spent in science fiction, though he is said to dislike the label. His 2006 novel Nova Swing won both the Arthur C. Clarke Award in the UK and the Philip K. Dick Award in the US, NPR reports.
For a writer with a cult following rather than a bestseller’s profile, the Booker is a large step up in attention. Previous winners have often borrowed from science fiction, Wood said in a statement, but none had come from its core. Her description of Harrison was of an original thinker who takes ideas seriously.
What the book is
The novel is set on the Kent coast in the years after an unexplained catastrophe, following a man named Philip, who searches for artifacts along the shore, and his aunt Marnie. NPR describes a slow-burning invasion by shape-shifting beings called the iGhetti. Harrison has said he left out as much explanation as he could so that readers share the characters’ disorientation.
He told the Booker team that the book asks what happens when every expectation of the world becomes an ongoing disaster and people still have to make a life. Judges’ chair Dame Mary Beard called it a challenging read that, surprisingly given the subject, leaves a twinge of optimism.
How it was chosen
The judges chose Harrison unanimously after a day of debate over six shortlisted novels, the BBC reports. Beard said there was disagreement and debate but that nobody stomped off. The panel also included Raymond Antrobus, Jarvis Cocker, Rebecca Liu and Patricia Lockwood.
| Shortlisted author | Book |
|---|---|
| M. John Harrison (winner) | The End of Everything |
| Marlon James | The Disappearers |
| Luke Kennard | Black Bag |
| Rebecca Perry | May We Feed the King |
| Elizabeth Strout | The Things We Never Say |
| Douglas Stuart | John of John |
Table: GoodBad. Data from the BBC, 9 November 2026.
Will you enjoy it?
Reception has been mixed, which the BBC says is part of the story. The Guardian praised the book but said it will not be for everyone, and the New York Times found the broken world harder to grasp the more it learned. The Literary Review called it a work of uncanny beauty, and the Telegraph said reading it feels like dreaming.
The prize honours the best novel written in English and published in the UK or Ireland in the year to 30 September. Winners receive £50,000 and a trophy presented by the previous year’s winner, David Szalay, who won in 2025 for Flesh. Wood called the book unsettling but not strange: a realist novel about a strange world. If you try it, expect disorientation by design.
