M John Harrison wins 2026 Booker Prize for dystopian novel The End of Everything

ملخص مفصل

Octogenarian M John Harrison has won the Booker Prize for The End of Everything, which the judges described as "the politics of now seen through the lens of the future".

At 81, M John Harrison has become the oldest winner of the Booker Prize, worth 50,000 British pounds ($95,000).

The English author, known for his sci-fi and fantasy books, won the award for his dystopian novel The End of Everything, about a man and his aunt living in the south of England in the decades after a mysterious invasion has led to society's collapse.

The novel opens as scavenger Phillip Tennent finds a bundle on the beach. He takes the "artefact" — a "biological gadget" discarded by the invading iGhetti — to the home of his artist aunt Marnie, whose memory is failing.

But Marnie is immediately wary of the bundle, which, to her, seems to be growing in size as they speak.

First inspired to write The End of Everything by the 2008 global financial crisis, Harrison told the Booker Prize the book's themes and satire sprang from current affairs.

"What happens when all of our expectations and explanations of the world become an ongoing disaster, but we still have to make a life?" he said.

"I really didn't expect to be up here this evening," he said. "I honestly didn't, here at the end of everything.

"You talk glibly about your life being changed but it's weird when it happens. I feel like a proper writer at last, totally lacking in confidence."

He went on to thank his publisher Serpent's Tail and partner Casper for being patient with him, a self-described "complete lunatic".

مطلع المقال، مقتطف من ABC Science. لقراءة المقال كاملًا، افتحه على موقع الناشر.