John Harrison wins Booker for novel that finds hope in despair

London: British author M John Harrison was named the winner of the 2026 Booker Prize for his dystopian satire ‘The End of Everything’ at a ceremony here on Monday night.

Aged 81, Harrison becomes the oldest author to win the prestigious literary prize after a writing career spanning 60 years.

Just 198 pages, ‘The End of Everything’ was also the shortest novel on this year’s shortlist and won because judges felt it is a book that “leaves you with a twinge of optimism” about the world.

“I feel like a proper writer at last, totally lacking in confidence,” said Harrison.

“Prizes like this one, not that there are any prizes quite like the Booker, are so important in a landscape of industrialised fiction,” he said.

Fiction authors from the UK dominated the shortlist of the 2026 Booker, including Scottish American past winner Douglas Stuart — shortlisted this year for ‘John of John’.

Another past winner of the prize, Jamaican author Marlon James, was in the running with ‘The Disappearers’.

Elizabeth Strout for ‘The Things We Never Say’, ‘Black Bag’ by Luke Kennard and ‘May We Feed the King’ by Rebecca Perry were also among the finalists.

“The Booker judges spent a whole day debating the six remarkable novels on this year’s shortlist, before agreeing unanimously to award the 2026 prize to ‘The End of Everything’ by M John Harrison,” said author Mary Beard, chair of the Booker Prize 2026 judging panel.

“It’s a book that turns you upside down, raises a wry smile — and surprisingly, given the subject matter, leaves you with a twinge of optimism.

“Central to the story are Phillip Tennent and his elderly aunt Marnie, living on the south coast of England, a few decades into the future, some years after a mysterious catastrophe: an invasion of ‘iGhetti’ — the ‘i’ hinting at something digital, but you can’t be sure,” she said.

Last year, Booker Prize winning author Kiran Desai returned to the coveted literary award shortlist with ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’. However, the 53-year-old Delhi-born author, who won the Booker Prize in 2006 with ‘The Inheritance of Loss’, lost out on a second win in 2025 to ‘Flesh’ by Hungarian British author David Szalay.

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