Who is John Harrison? Meet the British author who won the 2026 Booker Prize; here's what he said in 'The End of Everything'

British author M. John Harrison won the 2026 Booker Prize for the novel The End of Everything. The winner was announced on Monday at a ceremony held in London’s Old Billingsgate, a former fish market.

This year’s jury was chaired by historian Mary Beard and included poet Raymond Antrobus, writer Patricia Lockwood, critic Rebecca Liu and Jarvis Cocker, lead singer of British band Pulp, according to CNN.

Historic win!

At the age of 81, Harrison made history as the oldest recipient of this award.

Its win could also be seen as the first time a science fiction novel has won the award, news agency ANI reported.

Although 2024’s winning film Orbital is set aboard a space station, the philosophical novel is darker in its categorization.

Regardless, this year it’s a rare sci-fi accolade that honors an author who has been publishing in the genre for more than five decades.

Booker Prize 2026: What will the winner get?

According to ANI, Harrison will take home £50,000 (approximately $67,000) in prize money.

“‘The End of Everything’ can be read as a thriller, a mystery, a satire, a dystopia, a road novel, a work of realism; whatever the reader is looking for can be found here, albeit told obliquely and with twists,” the jury wrote in a Q&A published before the announcement.

Who is John Harrison?

Harrison is a genre-defying British author and literary critic.

He sold his first story in 1965 and in 1969 joined the staff of the British speculative fiction magazine New Worlds, where he edited the book pages until 1978, according to his profile on the Booker Prize website.

He began his “Virconium” series in 1971, set on a futuristic Earth, and continued to write about the fictional city in novels and stories until 1984.

His novels include Mountaineers, which won the 1989 Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature; Nova Swing, which won the 2007 Arthur C. Clarke Award; and The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, which won the 2020 Goldsmiths Prize for Innovation in Fiction.

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

He has reviewed a wide range of fiction for the TLS, the Telegraph, the Guardian and the New York Times; is the co-author of a quartet of fantasy novels about talking cats; and a ghost written in the name of a legendary British mountaineer. He was a judge of the Booker Prize 2022.

Among his other works, he completed the “Kefahuchi Tract” trilogy between 2002 and 2012. This year he was nominated for the Booker Prize for the first time.

John Harrison: “I finally feel like a proper writer, completely without confidence”

Here’s what he said in his speech after winning the Booker Prize:

“This is a well-deserved welcome. I really didn’t expect to be here tonight. I honestly wasn’t here at the end of it all, but here I am.”

You talk lightly about your life changing, but it’s weird when it happens.

I finally feel like a proper writer, completely devoid of self-confidence

Prizes like this, not that there are any prizes like the Booker, are so important in the landscape of industrialized fiction.

So I’m honored to be on the short list of such remarkable players as Luke, Rebecca, Marlon, Douglas and Elizabeth.

Of course, I also thank the Booker Foundation, Gabby Wood and her team, and Hannah, Zoe and Lily (the judges). And I know from my own experience in 2022 that judging is as tiring as it is fun. Really, sometimes more tiring than fun.

So I am especially grateful for the efforts of this year’s panel, chaired by the inimitable Mary Beard, Raymond Antrobus, Jarvis Cocker, Rebecca Leo and Patricia Lockwood. So thanks to you too.

No one really writes a novel without help. I’ve had so much support over the last 40 or 50 years that at this point my contribution seems the smallest.

So I have to thank my agent, Will Francis.”