The British author M. John Harrison has won the 2026 Booker Prize, considered one of the most prestigious literary awards for a work of fiction. At 81 years old, he is also the oldest author ever to be awarded with the honor.
The announcement was made during a ceremony at London’s Old Billingsgate, the site of a former fish market, on Monday. Harrison will receive a prize of £50,000 ($67,000). This year’s judging panel, chaired by historian Mary Beard, featured writers Raymond Antrobus and Patricia Lockwood, critic Rebecca Liu and musician Jarvis Cocker, front man of the British band Pulp.
Harrison’s post-apocalyptic turn, titled “The End of Everything,” takes place in the English coastal town of Dalston-on-Sea in the not-too-distant future, during the occupation of mysterious lifeforms called the iGhetti.
“‘The End of Everything’” can be read as a thriller, a mystery, a satire, a dystopia, a road novel, a work of realism; whatever the reader is looking for can be found here, albeit told at a slant and with a twist,” the jury wrote in a Q&A published ahead of the announcement.
Harrison beat five other finalists, including the betting market’s favorites Marlon James and Douglas Stuart, both former winners.
Harrison was selected from 163 submissions that were narrowed down to a 13-book longlist and six finalists, announced in September. The shortlist included James “The Disappearers” and Stuart’s “John of John” as well as Luke Kennard’s “Black Bag,” Elizabeth Strout’s “The Things We Never Say,” and Rebecca Perry’s “May We Feed the King.”
Ahead of Monday’s ceremony, the Booker Prize Foundation’s chief executive, Gaby Wood, said that the shortlisted books were unified by a question: “What can we know of each other, what do we infer or assume, what are we prepared to see?”
“Despite the great range in their styles and subjects, in all of these novels we find forms of isolation: relationships breaking down or withheld, people harboring secrets or pain, characters closing themselves off from others or attempting to reach beyond their solitude towards them,” Wood said, according to a statement on the Prize’s official website.
First awarded in 1969, the Booker Prize was originally only open to writers from the UK, Ireland or Commonwealth nations. From the 2014 prize onwards, eligibility was opened to include English-language authors of any nationality, as long as the nominated work is published in the UK or Irish markets. Its sister award, the International Booker Prize, is meanwhile awarded for a work of fiction that has been translated into English.
Last year’s Booker Prize went to author David Szalay’s “Flesh,” a sparsely written novel recounting a taciturn Hungarian immigrant’s journey from poverty to the upper echelons of London high society. Other notable winners include Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, William Golding, Ian McEwan, Arundhati Roy and Kazuo Ishiguro.
