The Booker Prize was announced earlier this week and it was quite a divisive win that has created a lot of interesting discussion! Lizzy shares her thoughts.
Who won?
After a lot of speculation about winners from the 6 excellent books that were shortlisted, the announcement of the Booker Prize Winner for 2026 went to M. John Harrison for The End of Everything. This is a fascinating win for so many reasons - British writer M. John Harrison has become the oldest person to win the Booker Prize at 81 years of age, but more interestingly it's also the first times that a traditionally sci-fi genre author has taken out the award (although his book is genre-defying, as all my favourite books tend to be). The judging panel said about the winner that "‘It’s a book that turns you upside down, raises a wry smile – and surprisingly, given the subject matter, leaves you with a twinge of optimism." In the acceptance speech for his unexpected win, M. John Harrison said himself that he really hadn't expected to be up there, and many people felt the same.
What is The End of Everything about?
The End of Everything centers on two characters, Phillip (a beachcomber scavenging at the sealine) and his elderly aunt Marnie. It's set in the future in England, after a strange crisis has brought about a slow and unsettling end of society as we know it, and people are existing with societal norms no longer in place and strange amorphous entities (iGhetti) are creating 'bad patches' and wandering the landscape after invading the world. Written in a dreamlike structure, The End of Everything explores the apocalypse and a strange, dreamlike journey amongst the collapse of all we know.
"For years Phillip Tennent lived at the edge of the sea, where artefacts were washed up every day. Scavengers, professional and otherwise, came and went. Turnover was higher than you’d expect given the relaxed lifestyle, the constant good weather, the ease with which some sort of existence could be pursued. " - The first lines of The End of Everything
Why is this win so divisive?
Firstly, a lot of people had expectations about who would win - it becomes a huge part of following The Booker Prize, being able to make predictions and rankings especially at the shortlist phase. The book that I think most people had at the top of their list was Marlon James' The Disappearers, or Douglas Stuart's John of John. For me, I had picked up a copy of The End of Everything a couple of months ago because I love a speculative, end of the world story - but I was so sure it wouldn't win based on it's weirdness and the early reviews from people I follow that I hadn't read it yet so that I could instead try to read the shortlist that had a higher chance of winning (jokes on me!). So many big book influencers and content creators had The End of Everything at the bottom of their own rankings for who would win, and so to have people be so wrong obviously leads to a lot of discussion about the mismatch between their experience of reading it and that of the judges.
The book itself has an incredibly low rating on Goodreads, at the time of writing it sits at 2.89 out of 5, with 4,586 ratings. It will be fascinating to see how this rating changes with the book ending up in more hands now that it's the winner, and I was pretty surprised to see a book with such a low score but I think it speaks to the fact that this judging panel leans a little more experimental and were open to work that wasn't super mainstream and a little weirder than the usual.
There's lots more being written about everything from the age of the author, to the subject matter saying nothing new- and on these points I don't agree at the moment, half way through, but I'm excited to keep reading.
The Shortlist:
My thoughts - halfway through!
I love a weird book - Julia Armfield's Our Wives Under the Sea or Shark Heart by Emily Habeck come to mind - books that play with genres I love but using prose and structure in interesting ways. They are also both examples of books that give us an intimate insight into a strange world where we don't have the full picture, and I guess I'm quite okay with that.
Halfway through I can sense that things are about to take a strange turn and I'm excited to see how it unfolds in the second half. It's dream like and unsettling, beautifully articulated and disturbing in moments, and I know it will be a book that stays with me and lingers, probably requiring a reread upon completion (and I never reread anything, who has the time?!).
It's definitely different to the usual Booker Prize Winner, but that's what I love about this award. Each year, the new selection of judges provides a different lens into what books deserve recognition and I knew as soon as author Patricia Lockwood was involved as a judge we might have some weirder books on the shortlist (still didn't think this would win though!).
The End of Everything is a quick read - more novella in length, and I think if you enjoy experimental fiction or speculative sci-fi, or just mind-bending use of words, it's worth a try! For an award that usually leans very literary fiction, M. John Harrison's novel is experimental in structure and incredibly interesting in prose, and not your average storyline that is easy to get stuck in and follow. People expecting a linear plot or storyline are going to be left a little baffled, but if, like me, you are generally baffled most of the time and comfortable with that - I think you'll still find it a fascinating read.
I think at the moment the thing that stands out for me with this novel is the way it portrays the end of the world in such a different way - a quietly confusing apocolypse where our world and our communities are slowly eroded before our eyes and we are powerless to do anything to stop it. It speaks to so much about our current world where AI has become an intimate member of many people's lives, and we are on this constant push for more and faster. It's a story about what it's like when you no longer recognize the world around you, how do you continue to exist and make a life out of the scraps that are there, what are you left knowing when the world has changed at such a fundamental level.
It reminds me of Orbital in a way, the Booker Prize winner from 2024 by Samantha Harvey and another short but impactful book that follows six astronauts slowly rotating around the planet. It's not a book for everyone, but I love a book that not only makes me stop and fall in love with language but also makes me think about existence - albeit Samantha Harvey's Orbital made me remember how beautiful our planet is whereas The End of Everything leans a little more horrifying in the realizations it brings about. In that way it also brings to mind another previous winner that I loved but many didn't, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch - a dark and stressful portrait of Ireland in the near future as society collapses and tyranny takes over.
Like many books, I can completely understand why this isn't a book for everyone, but I think this might still be a book for me. What a joy to be readers and to have authors writing different books in different ways for different people.
Books The End of Everything is reminding me of:
