The Booker Prize goes to M. John Harrison’s science fiction novel The End of Everything
The Serpent’s Tail novel wins the 2026 Booker in London. At 81, Harrison is the oldest winner in the prize’s history.
M. John Harrison has won the 2026 Booker Prize for The End of Everything. The verdict was announced on the evening of 9 November at Old Billingsgate in London, UK. It is the first Booker for the novel’s independent publisher, Serpent’s Tail. Harrison, 81, is the oldest winner in the history of the award.
The book follows Phillip Tennent, who makes a living collecting what the sea deposits on the English coast. A catastrophe has changed the country, but Harrison offers no reassuring explanation: the object Tennent retrieves from the Channel makes that world even harder to interpret. It is the writer’s thirteenth novel. The jury chaired by Mary Beard chose it unanimously from six finalists.