The End of Everything (published by the independent Serpent’s Tail) by the English writer born in 1945, M. John Harrison, is among the contenders for the Booker Prize 2026. The book will be released in Italy by Mercurio at the end of March 2027.
Harrison has received a prize of £50,000 and the trophy, handed to him by the 2025 winner, David Szalay, during the final ceremony held in London.
The Booker Prize, as a reminder, is open to authors of any nationality who write in English and whose works have been published in the United Kingdom and/or Ireland. In its 55-year history, it has honored figures such as Salman Rushdie, J.M. Coetzee, Arundhati Roy, Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood, Hilary Mantel, Paul Beatty, Bernardine Evaristo and Samantha Harvey.
Other Finalists
Among the six finalists for the 2026 edition were also The Disappearers by Marlon James (Hamish Hamilton; due in Italy through NN in autumn 2027), Black Bag by Luke Kennard (John Murray), May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry (Granta; in Italy through Garzanti in 2027), The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout (Viking; in Italy through Einaudi – here is our review), and John of John by Douglas Stuart (Picador; in Italy with Mondadori).
Set in the near future, The End of Everything is a dystopian, satirical, and destabilizing novel that follows the fortunes of a man who scavenges the beach and his pistol‑wielding aunt as they struggle to survive along the Kent coast…
The Oldest Booker Prize Winner in the History of the Prize
The 81-year-old M. John Harrison, culminating a sixty-year literary career (The End of Everything is his thirteenth novel), is the oldest winner in the award’s history. For the jury chair Mary Beard, his book is “a work that upends you, that elicits an ironic smile and, remarkably — given its subject matter — also leaves a spark of optimism.”
As the author himself explained, the inspiration came from current events: “What happens when all our expectations and explanations about the world transform into a continual disaster, and yet we still must manage to live?”
