SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2026 BOOKER PRIZE

A haunting apocalyptic adventure, and a formidable exploration of what it means to be human in a shifting world, from "one of the very great writers alive today." (China Miéville)

"A book not just about everything but about now.” —Booker Prize Judge citation

"I don't think I'll read a better book this year, perhaps decade."—Observer (UK)

"A formidable book."—Financial Times

Phillip Tennent makes his living at the tideline, collecting artifacts that wash up from the Channel. It's been years since the crisis changed everything, but its exact nature remains obscure. Government barely functions, the seas are full of new creatures, an entire continent has been mislaid. It feels like the end.

Now Phillip has fished out of the water an object he can't keep. A creature that keeps changing. An artifact he must take inland, before it destroys everything he thinks he knows. The End of Everything is a slyly satirical and unsettling post-apocalyptic adventure into the limits of human understanding, from the peerless master of contemporary fiction.

Story Locale:Kent coast, England
 
Contributor Bio(s)
 
M. John Harrison is the award-winning author of many novels, including Climbers, The Course of the Heart, and The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again. Over the last four decades, Harrison has carved out a stellar career across a number of literary forms, and is acclaimed by such writers as Angela Carter, Deborah Levy and Iain Banks. From 1968 to 1975, he was literary editor of the influential British science fiction magazine New Worlds. He has won the Boardman Tasker Prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Goldsmiths Prize. In 2025, he was elected as a Fellow of  the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in England.