28 July 2026
We are delighted that M. John Harrison’s The End of Everything has been longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize! Here’s what the judges had to say about this haunting apocalyptic adventure:
‘Two beachcombers meet and exchange words at the intertidal; we are in Kent, and it is the near-future, but one that recognises itself to be in the middle of a catastrophe. The sky is glitching, and something strange, formless and growing is soon to come out of the sea, to imitate our speech, forms, and customs. Our left-behind inhabitants scavenge where and what they can, provisional alliances are made and broken, shocking violence occurs, and no one can agree on exactly what has happened. A book not just about everything but about now. Shimmering and oblique, it holds the reader to the surface of something very grave and deep.’
We are incredibly proud to publish this novel from one of the masters of contemporary fiction and thrilled to see M. John Harrison make his way on the prestigious longlist after an illustrious 60+ year career. Congratulations to all the other nominated novelists, the shortlist will be announced on 22nd September and you can read more about the full longlist here.
Read more about The End of Everything below.
‘Dreamlike and baffling’ GUARDIAN
‘Extremely beautiful … I don’t think I’ll read a better book this year, perhaps decade’ OBSERVER
‘A formidable book, unexpectedly compassionate’ FINANCIAL TIMES
‘I loved this book so much’ SARAH JESSICA PARKER
Phillip Tennent makes his living at the tideline, collecting artefacts that wash up from the Channel. It’s been years since the crisis changed everything, but its exact nature remains obscure. Government barely functions, the seas are full of new creatures, Europe has been mislaid. It feels like the end.
Now Phillip has fished out of the water an object he can’t keep. A creature that keeps changing. An artefact he must take inland, before it destroys everything he thinks he knows. The End of Everything is a slyly satirical and unsettling post-apocalyptic adventure into the limits of human understanding from the peerless master of contemporary fiction.
‘At once surreal, seductive, shrewdly funny and wholly terrifying’ JULIA ARMFIELD
‘Harrison is without peer as a chronicler of the fraught, unsteady state we’re in’ OLIVIA LAING
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