The Booker Prize executive said the novel “knows everything about the novel form, and exactly what it’s doing when it breaks it”.
Ms Wood said: “Though very unsettling, The End Of Everything is not, in fact, a strange book.
“It’s a realist book about a strange world, populated by desperate, unmoored characters.”
She added: “This is a historic win, for a writer whose decades of work are lightly worn on every page.”
The 2026 Booker Prize shortlist in full:
- The End Of Everything by M John Harrison
- The Disappearers by Marlon James
- Black Bag by Luke Kennard
- May We Feed The King by Rebecca Perry
- The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
- John Of John by Douglas Stuart.
The panel considered 163 books and looked for the best work of long-form fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between October 1 2025 and September 30 2026.
Previous winners of the Booker Prize include Sir Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, Bernardine Evaristo and Dame Hilary Mantel.