LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2026 · A Times bestseller · Indian subcontinent edition
Phillip Tennent makes his living at the tideline on the Kent coast, collecting artefacts that wash up from the Channel. Years have passed since the crisis changed everything, but nobody can say what the crisis actually was. Government barely functions. The seas are full of new creatures. Europe has been mislaid. It feels like the end.
Then Phillip pulls from the water an object he cannot keep — a creature that will not stay the same shape, an artefact he has to carry inland before it takes apart everything he thought he understood.
M. John Harrison's first novel in six years is a slyly satirical post-apocalyptic adventure into the limits of what people are able to understand. The Booker judges called it shimmering and oblique; the Financial Times called it dusky, casually horrifying, unexpectedly compassionate.
About the author
M. John Harrison sold his first story in 1965 and edited the books pages of New Worlds through the 1970s. His novels include Climbers, which won the Boardman Tasker Prize; Nova Swing, which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award; and The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, which won the 2020 Goldsmiths Prize. He was a Booker Prize judge in 2022. He lives in Shropshire.
Edition details
- Serpent's Tail paperback, 208 pages
- Distributed in India by Hachette India — for sale in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Pakistan only
- Paperback published 28 July 2026 (first published 18 June 2026)
