23 September 2026
We are delighted that M. John Harrison’s The End of Everything has been shortlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize! Here’s what the judges had to say about this year’s shortlist:
‘Spanning a range of genres – from dystopian fiction to contemporary realism, from campus satire to historical fiction – the shortlisted books explore what it means to be human in an ever-changing world and the communities and events that shape us. Both intimate and epic, personal and political, they provide meditations on familial bonds, identity, shame, love, loneliness, survival and the ultimate unknowability of others. They are moving, pacey, funny, violent, intriguing, horrifying and hopeful.
The interior lives of a rich cast of characters are vividly depicted by the shortlisted authors, from a beachcomber eking out an existence on the coast of Kent to an out-of-work actor paid to attend university lectures zipped inside a black leather bag for a psychology experiment; from a reluctant monarch in a medieval court under threat by scheming courtiers to a son returning home to his repressive father in a traditional Calvinist island community in the Outer Hebrides; from a teacher with a seemingly comfortable life in coastal Massachusetts who is harbouring a secret, to a survivor of a murderous homophobic attack in 1980s Kingston, Jamaica, set on retribution’
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 shortlist after an illustrious 60+ year career. Congratulations to all the other shortlisted novelists, the winner will be announced on 9th November and you can read more about the full shortlist here.
Read more about The End of Everything below.
‘I don’t think I’ll read a better book this year, perhaps decade’ OBSERVER
‘Brilliant’ TIMES
‘This drily witty fable speaks to our deepest fears’ TELEGRAPH
‘Haunting’ IRISH TIMES
‘This is powerful stuff … Thrilling’ MARK HADDON
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.
‘A work of genius’ NEW SCIENTIST
‘I loved this book so much’ SARAH JESSICA PARKER
‘At once surreal, seductive, shrewdly funny and wholly terrifying’ JULIA ARMFIELD
‘Visionary and brilliant’ CHINA MIÉVILLE
‘It will get deep into your bones’ CHRIS POWER
Follow M. John Harrison on Instagram or subscribe to his blog.
