British author John Harrison wins Booker Prize 2026

• British author John Harrison was named the winner of the 2026 Booker Prize for his dystopian satire ‘The End of Everything’ at a ceremony held at Old Billingsgate in London on November 9.  

• He received £50,000 and a trophy, presented to him by last year’s winner David Szalay.  

• At 81, Harrison becomes the oldest author to win in the history of the prize, with a writing career spanning 60 years.

The Booker Prize panel

• The judging panel was chaired by writer and broadcaster Mary Beard.

• The panel considered 163 books and were looking for the best work of long-form fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between October 1, 2025 and September 30, 2026.  

• ‘The End of Everything’ was selected as the winner from a shortlist of six books. 

• A veteran of the science fiction literary scene, it was Harrison’s first time being shortlisted for the coveted prize.

The other five books shortlisted were: 

i) ‘The Disappearers’ by Marlon James

ii) ‘Black Bag’ by Luke Kennard

iii) ‘May We Feed the King’ by Rebecca Perry

iv) ‘The Things We Never Say’ by Elizabeth Strout

v) ‘John of John’ by Douglas Stuart.

What is the novel ‘The End of Everything’ about?

• Just 198 pages, ‘The End of Everything’ was also the shortest novel on this year’s shortlist.  

• It is a destabilising and satirical dystopian novel that follows a beachcomber and his pistol-toting aunt as they eke out an existence together on a near-future Kent coast. 

• Writing in short, filmic chapters, Harrison both leans on conventional literary forms and upends them, probing the limits of human understanding and letting the reader fill in the gaps.

Other works of John Harrison

• Harrison sold his first story in 1965, and in 1969 joined the staff of the UK speculative fiction magazine New Worlds, where he edited the books pages until 1978. 

• His novels include ’Climbers’, which won the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature in 1989; ’Nova Swing’, which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2007; and ‘The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again’, which won the 2020 Goldsmiths Prize for innovation in fiction. 

• A collection of short stories, ‘You Should Come With Me Now’, was published in 2017, and a volume of selected stories written between 1970 and 2020 was published under the title ‘Settling the World’.  

What is the Booker Prize?

• The Booker Prize awards any work of long form fiction originally written in English and published in the UK and Ireland in the year of the prize, regardless of the nationality of their author. The work of long form fiction must be an original work in English (not a translation) and published by a registered UK or Irish imprint. Self-published works of long form fiction are not eligible. 

• The Booker Prize is worth £50,000 to the winner. It is awarded to the author of the best, eligible full-length work of long form fiction in the opinion of the judges. In addition, £2,500 is awarded to each of the six shortlisted authors.

• The Booker Prize for Fiction was first awarded in 1969.

• Previous winners of the prize include Salman Rushdie, J.M. Coetzee, Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood, Hilary Mantel, Marlon James, Bernardine Evaristo and Douglas Stuart.

International Booker Prize

• The International Booker Prize, formerly known as the Man Booker International Prize, has been awarded since 2005, when it was won by Albanian writer Ismail Kadare.

• It is awarded annually for a single book, translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland. 

• It is a sister prize to the Booker Prize.