In Graphics | All About Booker Prize 2025 Winner David Szalay and His Novel 'Flesh'

David Szalay wins Booker Prize with ‘extraordinary, singular novel’ ‘Flesh’

Nearly a decade after his 2016 novel, “All That Man Is,” was passed over for the Booker Prize, David Szalay has taken home gold with his latest work, “Flesh.” “Flesh,” his sixth novel, follows István, a socially isolated Hungarian teen who through circumstances beyond his control is thrust into London’s upper echelon. In the coming decades, he finds himself caught between his traumatic past and growing appetite for prestige. Szalay is the first …

Should David Szalay’s Flesh have won the Booker Prize?

David Szalay’s “Flesh” is “almost certainly the most monosyllabic Booker prizewinner ever”, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Times. The brooding protagonist, István, largely speaks in “gruff, gruntish ‘yeahs’, ‘nos’ and ‘okays’”, giving the book the “terse narrative style of a thriller”.It is also perhaps the “blokiest winner” in the literary award’s history, exploring masculinity in a way that will likely appeal to that “elusive creature, the 21…

In Graphics | All about Booker Prize 2025 winner David Szalay and his novel 'Flesh'

Hungarian-British writer David Szalay won the prestigious Booker Prize for his novel Flesh on Monday (10 November). The 51-year-old author beat five other finalists, including favourites Andrew Miller of Britain and Indian author Kiran Desai, to receive the coveted literary award

'Flesh' wins 2025 Booker Prize: 'We had never read anything quite like it'

Andrew Limbong at NPR: István isn’t one of the most talkative characters in literary fiction. He says “yeah” and “okay” a lot, and is mostly reactive to the world around him. But that quietness covers up a tumultuous life — from Hungary to England, from poverty to being in close contact with the super-rich. He’s the center of David Szalay’s latest novel, Flesh, which just won this year’s Booker Prize. “We had never read anything quite like it,” …