M. John Harrison becomes the oldest ever winner of The Booker Prize at the age of 81 for his post-apocalyptic satire The End Of Everything

They say it’s never too late to be what you might have been.

And the quote, famously misattributed to George Eliot, couldn’t be truer for British author M. John Harrison, who has just become the oldest ever winner of The Booker Prize at the age of 81.

The Warwickshire-born sci-fi novelist, who has a writing career spanning six decades, has won the UK’s most prestigious literary prize for his post-apocalyptic satire The End Of Everything.

Picked from a carefully-selected shortlist of six novels and announced at a ceremony at Old Billingsgate in London on Monday the novel was described as a ‘book that turns you upside down.’

The story is set in a coastal town in southeast England, at a time in the near future when the country is being haunted by an alien lifeform called the iGhetti.

It follows a beachcomber called Phillip who discovers a shape-shifting creature washed ashore, which he must transport inland before it mutates.

Considered a proponent of modern science-fiction, this is Harrison’s 13th novel, and his first to even make the Booker longlist.

He is best known for his Viriconium series, as well as 1989’s Climbers and his Kefahuchi Tract trilogy.

‘Many past Booker Prize authors have borrowed facets of science fiction in their work, but M. John Harrison is the first Booker winner to have emerged from the bona fide SF world,’ said Gaby Wood, Chief Executive of the Booker Prize Foundation.

‘He is a genuinely original thinker, a genre-defying writer who takes ideas seriously.’

Mary Beard, who was this year’s chair of judges, said that the panel had deliberated for a whole day and decided unanimously on The End Of Everything.

‘It’s a book that turns you upside down, raises a wry smile – and surprisingly, given the subject matter, leaves you with a twinge of optimism,’ she said.

She said that the books deals with ‘the politics of now seen through the lens of the future.’

Margaret Atwood was previously the oldest recipient of The Booker Prize, when she won for The Testaments at the age of 79 in 2019.

After many years of American authors dominating the Booker shortlist, this year four out of the six authors were British-born.

Harrison was up against Rebecca Perry’s May We Feed the King, Luke Kennard’s Black Bag and Douglas Stuart’s John of John as well as The Things We Never Say by American author Elizabeth Strout and The Disappearers by Jamaica’s Marlon James.

It was just the second time in ten years that there were more male than female authors on the shortlist.

Harrison, whose book is published by independent publisher Serpent’s Tail, was awarded a trophy and £50,000 in prize money.