This week, the Booker Prize jury awarded its 2026 prize to perhaps its most controversial winner ever. So I thought I’d write about that here in today’s deep dive. But first, the roundup.
Roundup
Music
The 2026 music year continues to be in wind-down mode, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been some releases worth listening to. The most pleasant surprise for me last week was a really strong new release from long-disbanded 1980s Canadian new wave band Spoons, Night Life. New albums from Moody Joody and Kings of Leon also worked well for me. This week things slowed to a trickle, with the most interesting new releases being the soundtrack to the latest Hunger Games film and U2’s new album, which features a touching collaboration with the late great Dolly Parton.
Albums
- Night Life (Spoons)
- Plain Jane (Moody Joody)
- Oh My Beloved (Kings of Leon)
Songs
- “Handshake Thugs” (Arkells)
- “Sweet Surrender” (Moody Joody)
- “Romanticize the Dive” (Metric)
- “My Whole World” (Kings of Leon)
- “Torn (ft. Dolly Parton)” (U2)
Reading
- Stitched (Eli McCann, 2026)
- Autumn (Ali Smith, 2016)
- The Brightness (Chad Harbach, 2022)
- The Shipikisha Club (Mubanga Kalimamukwento, 2026)
- Said the Dead (Doireann Ní Ghríofa, 2026)
- A Wexford Carol (Peadar Merrigan, 2026)
- Mislaid in Parts Half-Known (Seanan McGuire, 2024)
- Lloyd McNeil’s Last Ride (Will Leitch, 2025)
- Paradiso 17 (Hannah Lililth Assadi, 2026)
- Have Not Been the Same, 2nd ed. (Michael Barclay, 2011 🇨🇦)
- Reservoir 13 (Jon McGregor, 2017)
- The Transition (Luke Kennard, 2017)
- Ghost-Eye (Amitav Ghosh, 2026)
Focus on: A Surprise(?) Booker Winner
This week, the Booker Prize jury gave out its award for 2026 to M. John Harrison’s The End of Everything. It was a controversial choice that set off a huge firestorm in the bookish community. The reaction has been very different from last year, when David Szalay won for Flesh. Where that work was legitimately polarizing, with many readers (including myself) hating it, but also a significant number really appreciating its big swings, the response this year has been more shock and confusion, both to the win and the book itself. So what’s the fuss all about?
M. John Harrison is a very well-respected author who has worked primarily in science fiction, and who is known for his brilliant phrase-level writing and opaque mode of storytelling. At 81 years, he’s the oldest writer to win the Booker, and The End of Everything is the first work of overt science fiction to win the prize. It is set in a near future, post-apocalyptic Britain, following an invasion of a mysterious alien force, whose presence has not only led to the collapse of society but of reality itself. It is an absolute triumph of atmosphere and setting. From the first page, you’re dropped into this uncertain and decaying world and you feel the discomfort and dread pervading the whole scene. It’s nothing short of masterful. Unfortunately, that’s all it does. It doesn’t really have a plot, in terms of sustained story arc. It creates interesting characters only to do nothing with them. Nor does it do much in terms of theme. This is a piece of literature that focuses on atmosphere to the exclusion of everything else. The vibes seem to be the whole point. This would have made a brilliant short story (and indeed, it apparently originated as such), but at the end of 198 pages, many (I’d say, most) readers’ response is ‘Why?’ The final 190 pages add really nothing that wasn’t already accomplished in those first few pages. The storytelling felt less ‘unconventional’ or ‘creative’ than non-existent. The writing felt less opaque and mysterious than antagonistic and deliberately obfuscating. It was the literary equivalent of a subtle piece of ambient music punctuated by dissonant (and the rare consonant) noises. It’s interesting and enjoyable for five minutes, but starts to feel really old, really fast. Among the people who read all thirteen longlisted books, The End of Everything generally placed twelfth or thirteenth in their rankings. (It was twelfth in mine.) And even those who liked it tended not to have it in their top three. So there was some disappointment when it was shortlisted, and genuine shock when it was announced as the winner.
The thing with the Booker Prize is that its criteria are very broad, and up to the jury to interpret. Its mandate is simply to “award what is, in the opinion of the judges, the best sustained work of fiction written in English and published in the UK and Ireland.” This jury stated when the shortlist was announced that they collectively wanted to award a novel that was stylistically inventive and that engaged with our present political moment. But even this doesn’t help explain the decision to award The End of Everything. For while it does check those boxes, so did a lot of the other books. And for many of us, it didn’t check those boxes as effectively as the others. And I think ultimately that’s what is driving the controversy. While there is definitely a contingent of readers who just think “I didn’t like it so it’s crap,” I think more of us recognize it for what it does well but are confounded that it could be considered “the best sustained work of fiction written in English,” when there were so many other brilliant, inventive, options sitting there on the shortlist. May We Feed the King is told primarily through whispers in palace hallways. Black Bag is a rare ‘satire’ that was actually laugh-out-loud funny and provides thought-provoking commentary on masculinity, humanity, and value in our present moment. The Disappearers takes the bold and discomforting approach of putting the reader in the poisoned minds of the perpetrators, and later traumatized victims, of an act of unimaginable violence. The Things We Never Say soaks its readers in the prevailing uncertainties of Trump’s USA. From the longlist, The Vivisectors was just as opaque as the winning book but in a more playful and slippery way, that felt like Lucy moving Charlie Brown’s football. Switzy puts the reader in the increasingly convoluted mind of a man living with dementia. Renovation explored migrant experience through having a disturbing piece of ‘home’ haunt its protagonist, literally showing up in her house. Even The Shadow of the Object, which was not well liked by readers, did more interesting things narratively, by coming at its themes from their absence. So I think the reason why this win was so shocking and controversial, especially to those who read all of the listed books, was simply that it’s hard to imagine The End of Everything being the “best” when the other options did so much more, and were so much more successful in what they did. For those who read the full list, it didn’t feel like a victory for unconventional storytelling because the jury had so many other options that were just as unconventional.
All this said, I was less surprised than many by the win. My line of reasoning from the start was that if the book’s choices (I’m not going to call them ‘failings’, since it was clearly deliberate; he didn’t ‘fail’ when it came to plotting or character, he simply didn’t care about them) didn’t disqualify it from contention for the jury at the very start of the process, there was no reason for it not to be longlisted. And if it was longlisted, there was no reason for it not to be shortlisted. And if it was shortlisted, there was no reason for it not to win. Basically, if you think it’s one of the best thirteen books of the year, you’ll probably also be inclined to think it’s the very best.
At the end of the day it is like any award, just an award, and not that big of a deal. Some of the online discourse has been silly in its anger and indignation. The End of Everything did one thing exceptionally well. It was also written by a well-respected author at the end of his career, and in a genre that has not historically been welcomed in the Booker space. And that combination was enough for the jury this year. But I don’t think this win will age well.
