M John Harrison's THE END OF EVERYTHING is one of six books selected for the 2026 Booker Prize shortlist. What the critics said Catherine Taylor, Financial Times ‘This is a formidable book: dusky, casually horrifying, unexpectedly compassionate. Its ending takes a deceptively conventional form, but the blank pages that follow invite the reader either to accept the end of everything as the title conveys, or imagine a continuous, ambiguous present — one that extends beyond the unexpected survivor of this particular story.’ Olivia Ho, Literary Review ‘Harrison has explained that he initially conceived the novel around 2010. But The End of Everything acutely refracts the anxieties of the present, in which a sense of imminent collapse has become ingrained in everyday existence. The novel doesn’t make clear sense of this; instead, it grasps at where language falls short of meaning, treating its subject like a lost continent just out of reach. The result is a work of uncanny beauty, tender and terrifying in equal parts.’ Helen Macdonald, The Observer ‘It’s fitting that this book has arrived in this post-pandemic, post-neoliberal, post-Brexit, post-everything summer, a time of pernicious prediction markets, AI gumming up the works, TikTokers memorialising sodium streetlights, looksmaxxers, floods, failing infrastructure, Ukrainian fields glittering with drifts of fibre-optic cable and a cage-fighting arena being built on the White House lawn. I don’t think I’ll read a better book this year, perhaps decade. The world is falling apart and The End of Everything properly fucks one up.’ Simon Ings, The Telegraph ‘Harrison isn’t weirder than most other writers, just better. Reading The End of Everything, you feel you’re not so much reading as dreaming. Or, to put it another way, this novel is like a painting by Paul Nash, chalky, degreased and illumined. As Harrison himself says: by “a pure 1930s light, from an imagination stocked when people could use words like ‘spiritual’ and still mean something”.’ Niall Harrison, Locus Mag ‘Many of M. John Harrison’s previous novels warn about the fantastic as a consolation, and the risks of exceeding the appropriate prescription, and I think The End of Everything may also be read as a depiction of a world subject to overdose, where lives have been saturated by the unreal. There is a grain of ambiguous hope in one character’s declara­tion that it doesn’t matter that the world has ended, “because another one will be along soon enough,” but what I felt when the novel released me was more immediate. I felt the urge to go outside, to run around and shout, not to celebrate the novel’s bril­liance (although I think it is brilliant), but simply to prove that, for now, something real still exists.’ What M. John Harrison said about The End of Everything‘The art towns of the UK’s East Coast provided the setting. I love that coast, all the way round from Hastings to the Thames – even up into Suffolk. Current affairs provided the themes and the satire: what happens when all of our expectations and explanations of the world become an ongoing disaster, but we still have to make a life?’ M. John Harrison in an interview with the Booker Prizes.What the judges said ‘Two beachcombers meet and exchange words at the intertidal; we are in Kent, and it is the near-future, but one that recognises itself to be in the middle of a catastrophe. The sky is glitching, and something strange, formless and growing is soon to come out of the sea, to imitate our speech, forms, and customs. Our left-behind inhabitants scavenge where and what they can, provisional alliances are made and broken, shocking violence occurs, and no one can agree on exactly what has happened. A book not just about everything but about now. Shimmering and oblique, it holds the reader to the surface of something very grave and deep.’ The Booker Prize 2026 judges.    

Congrats are owed to Alex Bellos who has been awarded The Christopher Zeeman Medal for the Promotion of Mathematics by The Institute of Mathematics and its Communications 🏅The IMA say: 'The Christopher Zeeman Medal was created to recognise and acknowledge the contributions of mathematicians involved in promoting mathematics to the public and engaging with the public in mathematics in the UK, and demonstrate that such activities are valued by the societies and the mathematical community at large and are a part of a mathematician’s roles and responsibilities.' Of Alex's award of the medal, they said: 'Alex Bellos is a highly deserving recipient whose work has transformed the way many people encounter and appreciate mathematics. [...] He has helped to shape the contemporary landscape of public mathematical culture in the UK, demonstrating that engagement with the public is not peripheral to mathematics, but integral to it.'Alex joins illustrious J&N company in Dr Hannah Fry and Dr Matt Parker, both of whom have been previous recipients of the medal. Congratulations, Alex! 

Congratulations to Janklow author and evolutionary biologist Dr Matilda Brindle whose team at Oxford University have won a prestigious Ig Nobel Prize for their research into the evolution of kissing 💋The Ig Nobel Prize, founded in 1990, honours achievements so surprising that they make people laugh, then think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honour the imaginative — and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology.Matilda's book on non-reproductive sexual behaviours is forthcoming with Headline in spring 2028. 

We couldn’t be happier to announce the WINNER of the inaugural David Bellos Translation Prize is Beth Hickling-Moore with IN THE FLESH, written by Carla Nyman and translated from the Spanish. You can read more about the novel here.Beth Hickling-Moore is a translator from Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian into English. Her work has appeared in The Stinging Fly, Wasafiri, and Modern Poetry in Translation, among other journals. Beth was the recipient of the 2025 PEN Grant for the English Translation of Italian Literature, and her work has received support from English PEN and the Fondation Jan Michalski. She has translated authors including Paulina Chiziane, Aline Bei, María Agúndez, Lília Momplé, Rosario Villajos, and Ariel Florencia Richards. She has translations forthcoming with Manilla Press, Summit, and Archipelago Books.Huge congratulations to Beth and thank you again to everyone who entered this year’s prize; we were so impressed by the quality of the submissions we received and so enjoyed reading literature from all corners of the globe! Translators: watch this space for the details on next year’s prize 🏆

Congratulations to M John Harrison whose 'visionary and brilliant' novel THE END OF EVERYTHING (Serpent's Tail) has been longlisted for The Booker Prize 2026! 🎊 Mary Beard, Chair of this year’s judges, said of those that made the cut: ‘Great books have never been written to a single formula. We are confident that our longlist of books has something for everyone. There’s the funny and the unsettling (and in some cases the funny and unsettling); there’s dystopian fantasy and domestic drama; there’s the gritty and the magically mysterious; there are some that will please and some that may shock.’The panel described THE END OF EVERYTHING as ‘shimmering’ and ‘oblique’, and as ‘a book not just about everything, but about now’. You can find the full longlist here; the shortlist is announced at a public event at the Southbank Centre on Tuesday, 22 September 2026. Many congratulations to M John Harrison!