M John Harrison becomes oldest winner of the Booker Prize
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M John Harrison has won the Booker Prize for his satirical novel "The End of Everything", becoming the oldest person to receive the award. Judges praised its "extraordinary expert writing and huge ambition".
M John Harrison has won the Booker Prize for "The End of Everything", a satirical novel, and is the oldest winner in the prize's history. The judges praised the book for its "extraordinary expert writing and huge ambition". Harrison said he now feels like a proper writer at last.
The winner was announced at a ceremony in London by the classicist Mary Beard, who chaired the judging panel. The panel also included the pop musician Jarvis Cocker.
The novel is set on England's Channel coast in the near future. An unspecified calamity has shattered society and brought an influx of enigmatic alien entities to Britain. The story follows a beachcomber who lives with his gun-toting aunt and finds a puzzling, shapeshifting artifact on the shore. Beard described it as "the politics of now seen through the lens of the future" and said it concerns a society "undergoing a catastrophe that they don't really understand."
Before the win, Harrison said he had spent 40 to 50 years working to shift the balance as a novelist and critic, asking why a well-written work of science fiction shouldn't be considered literary fiction.
The shortlist of six novels was chosen from a longlist of 163. It included two former winners, Marlon James and Douglas Stewart, as well as Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout, Luke Kennard's "Black Bag" and Rebecca Perry's "May We Feed the King". Founded in 1969, the prize is open to novels written in English and published in the U.K. and Ireland. Last year's winner was David Szalay's "Flesh".
