This is the first time the morning has won an award for fiction. Winner: M. John Harrison.
Ask any literary critic: is science fiction real literature? Of course, the literary critic will answer. Now try to remember how many science fiction writers have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In fact, only the British woman Doris Lessing, and this award is relatively recent, 2007. You won't find, let's say, the Strugatsaks in the school curriculum either.
"High" and science fiction are still a parallel reality: their classic lists are almost undeveloped, both areas have their own nest, their own awards and their own audience. But the situation changes slowly. So the morning prize finally recognised the existence of science fiction writers: the award was awarded to the British John Harrison for his novel with the optic title "The End of Everything".
Harrison, 81, is one of the most respected living science fiction writers. The End of Everything is a book set in the near future where Earth has been inhabited by massive beings known as the Igti. Where they came from and what they want is unclear, but the world has changed radically since their appearance. The main character is a typical "little man" whose job it is to collect objects related to Igati on the beach. One of his discoveries, naturally, will change everything.
This is Harrison's thirteenth novel. It's not in Russian. But there is the Variconium series, the novels Light, Nova Swing, Emptiness and The Sunken Land Rises Again.