A slyly satirical and unsettling post-apocalyptic adventure, The End of Everything by M. John Harrison explores the limits of human understanding in a world where everything familiar has fallen apart.
Winner of the Booker Prize 2026 | The Times Bestseller
Phillip Tennent makes his living along the tideline, collecting artefacts washed ashore from the Channel. Years after a mysterious crisis changed the world, its true nature remains unclear. Governments barely function, the seas teem with unfamiliar creatures, and Europe has seemingly disappeared. The world feels as though it has reached its end.
Then Phillip retrieves something from the water that he cannot keep. A strange, ever-changing creature – an artefact he must carry inland before it destroys everything he believes he knows.
Blending surrealism, dark humour and unsettling speculation, Harrison crafts an extraordinary post-apocalyptic journey into the unknown. The End of Everything is a thought-provoking exploration of a fractured world, the fragility of human understanding and the strange realities that emerge when the familiar disappears.
Praise for the book
'Dreamlike and baffling' – The Guardian
'Extremely beautiful ... I don't think I'll read a better book this year, perhaps decade' – The Observer
'A formidable book, unexpectedly compassionate' – Financial Times
'At once surreal, seductive, shrewdly funny and wholly terrifying' – Julia Armfield
Selected as a Book to Read in 2026 by The New Statesman and The Irish Times, and featured among the Best New Books by The Daily Telegraph, iNews and New Scientist.
