M John Harrison with grey hair and beard, looking at the camera and holding a copy of his bookImage source, Getty Images
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M John Harrison was billed by Booker bosses as "a genuinely original thinker"

ByIan YoungsCulture reporter
  • Published26 minutes ago

Author M John Harrison has become the oldest ever winner of the Booker Prize, picking up the prestigious literary award for his post-apocalyptic novel The End of Everything.

Harrison, 81, who has built a cult following over his 60-year career, was named the winner of the £50,000 prize at a ceremony in London on Monday.

The End of Everything is set in the years after a mysterious catastrophe that caused British society as we know it to collapse. It has divided opinion among readers, and was described as "bleak but brilliant" and "dreamlike and baffling" by one critic.