News by Levels · Level 3 · Student worksheet

Harrison’s Booker Win Marks an Age Record

In this lesson: Distinguish a real award from the fictional events in the winning novel.

Name: __________________________ Date: __________________

Read the story

The Booker Prizes named M. John Harrison its 2026 winner on November 9. Aged 81, the British author became the prize’s oldest winner after a writing career spanning 60 years.

His dystopian novel The End of Everything received the £50,000 award. Its imagined disaster is fiction, rather than a report of a real event.

Source: The Booker Prizes, 2026-11-09. https://thebookerprizes.com/media-centre/press-releases/the-end-of-everything-by-m-john-harrison-wins-the-booker-prize-2026

Read and practise

1. Which event is presented as real?

   1. The disaster imagined in the novel
   2. Every event in the fictional setting
   3. Harrison receiving the award

2. What does the 60-year figure describe?

   1. The time since the fictional disaster
   2. His writing career
   3. His age at the ceremony

Your turn

Write a brief account that keeps the award and the novel’s events separate.

________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________

Read online: https://newsbylevels.com/news/john-harrison-oldest-booker-winner-november-2026/level-3/