'The End of Everything’ by M. John Harrison wins the 2026 Booker Prize for fiction

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"The End of Everything," set on England’s Channel coast in the near future, explores themes of catastrophe and apocalypse. It centers on a beachcomber who discovers a mysterious artifact after society is shattered by an unspecified calamity

British writer M. John Harrison won the Booker Prize for fiction on Monday for “The End of Everything,” a satirical dystopian novel whose themes of “catastrophe and apocalypse” chime with our uneasy times.

It's the first work of science fiction to take the prestigious 50,000 pound ($67,000) literary award, but 81-year-old Harrison said he doesn't want to be hemmed in by the sci-fi label.

He said Booker recognition after six decades as an author shows that the era of “genres as fences and boxe...