Booker Prize 2026: M. John Harrison wins top literary honour aged 81

The Booker Prize 2026 has gone to the British author M. John Harrison for his novel The End of Everything.The 81-year-old is the oldest to win the prize – the pinnacle of a six-decade-long writing career. Renowned for his genre-bending, The End of Everything is Harrison’s 13th novel. A dystopian satire that takes place in a coastal English town after societal collapse, the author beat past winners Marlon James and Douglas Stuart to the top literary honour. Chair of the judges, Mary Beard, described The End of Everything as a “book that turns you upside down, raises a wry smile – and surprisingly, given the subject matter, leaves you with a twinge of optimism.” Established in 1969, the Booker Prize is the world’s most significant award for a single work of fiction, where the winning authors receive £50,000. The only requirements are that the book must be a work of long-form fiction originally written in English (the author can be of any nationality) and published in the UK or Ireland between 1 October 2025 and 30 September 2026.Past winners of the prestigious literary prize have included Hilary Mantel for Wolf Hall, Salman Rushdie for Midnight’s Children, and Arundhati Roy for The God of Small Things. At the ceremony in Old Billingsgate, Harrison’s trophy was presented by the author David Szalay, who won last year’s prize for his novel Flesh. The winning novel was selected by a judging panel that included poet Raymond Antrobus, musician Jarvis Cocker, journalist Rebecca Loi, and Booker-shortlisted novelist Patricia Lockwood. From dystopian fiction and contemporary realism to campus drama and historical fiction, the shortlist recognised authors exploring humour, heartbreak and satire. “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,” Beard said. She described Harrison’s genre-defying book as “the politics of now seen through the lens of the future.” Here’s where to pick up the Booker Prize 2026 winning novel, along with the shortlisted books. 'The End of Everything' by M. John Harrison, published by Serpent's Tail Amazon“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),” Beard said. “Social norms have been eroded, law and order have fallen into the hands of vigilantes, and you may well have a crashed plane lodged in your garden. People try to muddle through nonetheless, even making a show of business as usual (children’s parties and a morning coffee at a seaside café).“Some try desperately to make sense of what has happened. But one main point of the book is that if, or when, such an apocalypse comes it will be incomprehensible. And the old rules won’t matter either. Phillip is landed with an ‘item’ he found on the beach, a blob of jelly which quickly grows, develops speech and starts to tell his human minders what to do. This is the politics of now seen through the lens of the future.” Booker Prize 2026 shortlist 'John of John' by Douglas Stuart, published by PicadorAmazonDouglas Stuart won the Booker Prize in 2020 with Shuggie Bain, but John of John is arguably the Scottish author’s best yet. Stuart explores his signature themes of masculinity, working-class Scottish life and family relationships; this time on the Isle of Harris. The novel begins with 22-year-old art graduate John-Callum returning home to the isolated fishing, weaving and crofting community. Read MoreWith his dyed red hair, ‘strange clothes’ and artistic leanings, Cal is an affront to his father John, a devout Protestant, sheep farmer and a deacon in the Presbyterian church.John is reluctantly living with his sharp-tongued Glaswegian mother-in-law, Ella (a delightful character), and is deeply troubled by his son’s free expression. Little does Callum know, his father is hiding a secret of his own. An intimate portrait of a close-knit community in the rugged Outer Hebrides, John of John explores the tension between duty and religion, and desire and love. 'The Disappearers' by Marlon James, published by Hamish HamiltonAmazonThis is a sucker-punch of a novel. An epic of more than 600 pages, it took me longer to get through than my usual reading pace. The topic is heavy, and the story is heartbreaking – I picked it up between other books for relief. But oh, am I happy I finished it – and its characters won’t leave readers easily. The Disappearers returns to the same real-world setting of unstable 1980’s Jamaica, as reimagined in James’ previous Booker Prize-winning novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings. The book focuses on eight gay men targeted in a brutal mob attack during a play rehearsal in late eighties Kingston. Over two decades, it traces the victims as one seeks revenge, others to forget and some to entirely disappear. The novel is as graphic about violence – the attack itself is narrated by the attackers, giving the reader a warped sense of the event – as it is about sex. James paints a profoundly disturbing portrait of Jamaica in this era, where sexuality could be a death sentence, and disappearing could be salvation. The masterful writing picks up different narratives, from one character's experience as a black, gay student at a British university in the 1950’s to a young man’s disownment from his family. 'The Things We Never Say' by Elizabeth Strout, published by VikingAmazonThe American author Elizabeth Strout’s latest novel, The Things We Never Say, introduces us to a new character in the esteemed author's Massachusetts multiverse. Set in an unnamed coastal town during the 2024 presidential election, Artie Dam is a high school history teacher who is grappling with middle-aged ennui. Then, a brush with death and the unearthing of a decade-long secret change everything. Forced to reevaluate everything he’s ever known, Artie gains a new, powerful perspective that makes the reader reassess their own life in the process. The father-son relationship is particularly touching, while Strout’s political commentary on Trump America gives the small but mighty book extra weight.‘May We Feed the King’ by Rebecca Perry, published by Granta AmazonA historical novel that jumps between the present day and a medieval village, May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry follows a modern museum curator and a past monarch. As the curator works on a reconstruction of the king’s private chambers, she becomes increasingly obsessed with his story, filling in the gaps with her own imagination. Transporting us to the king’s day, Perry explores how the monarch struggles to shoulder the burden of unexpected power. His reluctance to act in the face of colonial conquests, war and the punishment of civilians sits uneasily alongside the court’s hyper-masculine expectations of leadership. Perry contrasts his perceived femininity with the influence of the powerful women surrounding him, raising questions about whose version of history we choose to believe – and how much of the past has been shaped by those who tell its story.'Black Bag' by Luke Kennard, published by John MurrayAmazonA campus comedy with a surrealist edge, poet Luke Kennard’s fiction debut Black Bag draws inspiration from a real 1960s experiment. The novel follows an out-of-work actor who accepts solid, steady work in a psychological experiment, conducted by the unreadable Dr Blend. The job? They’ll be zipped into an oversized leather bag to sit in the back of a lecture hall and seminar room during the autumn term. Kennard’s comedy chops are masterful – every page has a laugh-out-loud line. But it’s not fluff; the book sardonically tackles themes including masculinity, identity and the internet, while being an old-fashioned page-turner. This gave me comic relief while reading The Disappearers, proving the sheer breadth of this year’s shortlist.