81-year-old British author M John Harrison became the oldest winner of the Booker Prize on Monday, winning the prestigious award for his dystopian novel “The End of Everything,” which was also the shortest among this year’s shortlisted books.
The Telegraph online reports that The End of Everything is a book that “leaves you with a twinge of optimism “about the world, the judges said.
It’s just 198 pages.
“I feel like a proper writer at last, totally lacking in confidence,” said Harrison, who has been an author for 60 years.
“Prizes like this one, not that there are any prizes quite like the Booker, are so important in a landscape of industrialized fiction,” he said.
Fiction authors from the UK dominated the shortlist for 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 Disappearance.
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.
