Flesh by David Szalay has tonight won the Booker Prize 2025.
David Szalay receives £50,000 and a Booker Prize trophy, which has been presented to him by Samantha Harvey, last year’s winner, at a ceremony held at Old Billingsgate in London.
Announcing Flesh as the winner, Chair of the 2025 judges Roddy Doyle said, ‘The book we kept coming back to, the one that stood out from the other great novels, was Flesh – because of its singularity. We had never read anything quite like it. It is, in many ways, a dark book but it is a joy to read.’
Why did Flesh win?
Roddy Doyle, Chair of the Booker Prize 2025 judges, said:
‘At the end of the novel, we don’t know what the protagonist, István, looks like but this never feels like a lack; quite the opposite. Somehow, it’s the absence of words – or the absence of István’s words – that allow us to know István. Early in the book, we know that he cries because the person he’s with tells him not to; later in life, we know he’s balding because he envies another man’s hair; we know he grieves because, for several pages, there are no words at all.
‘I don’t think I’ve read a novel that uses the white space on the page so well. It’s as if the author, David Szalay, is inviting the reader to fill the space, to observe – almost to create – the character with him. The writing is spare and that is its great strength. Every word matters; the spaces between the words matter. The book is about living, and the strangeness of living and, as we read, as we turn the pages, we’re glad we’re alive and reading – experiencing – this extraordinary, singular novel.’
What’s Flesh about?
A spare but propulsive novel, Flesh follows a man from adolescence to old age as he is unravelled by a series of events beyond his grasp.
Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour – a married woman close to his mother’s age – as his only companion. Their encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that István barely understands, and his life soon spirals out of control.
As the years pass, he is carried gradually upwards on the 21st century’s tides of money and power, moving from the army to the company of London’s super-rich, with his own competing impulses for love, intimacy, status and wealth winning him unimaginable riches, until they threaten to undo him completely.
Flesh asks profound questions about what drives a life, what makes it worth living, and what breaks it.
Who’s the author and what have they said about Flesh?
David Szalay is the first Hungarian-British writer to win the Booker Prize. Born in Canada, he’s lived in Lebanon, the UK, Hungary, and now Vienna.
Szalay is the author of six works of fiction that have been translated into over 20 languages, as well as several BBC radio dramas.
He says, ‘It can be hard to identify the starting point of a novel. Flesh sort of evolved into existence.
‘I knew I wanted to write a book with a Hungarian end and an English end, since I was living very much between the two countries at the time and felt that that needed to be reflected in my choice of subject. And given that, writing about a Hungarian immigrant at the time when Hungary joined the EU seemed like an obvious way to go. So it would be, to some extent, a novel about contemporary Europe, and about the cultural and economic divides that characterise it.
‘I also wanted to write about life as a physical experience, about what it’s like to be a living body in the world – whatever divides us, we all share that. Those were the ingredients that I started with.’
Watch our quickfire Q&A with David Szalay
What else have the judges said about Flesh?
‘Flesh is a disquisition on the art of being alive, and all the affliction that comes along with it. The emotional detachment of the main character, István, is sustained by the tremendous movement of the plot. The pace of this novel speaks to one of the greater themes; the detachment of our bodies from our decisions.’
What have the critics said?
Luke Brown, Financial Times
‘Such novels are now rare, as male writers seem increasingly frightened to describe and reckon with the potentially destructive aspects of their character. In this context Flesh feels especially refreshing, illuminating and true. More than that, it is a moving work of art with a plot that compels and surprises and devastates.’
Johanna Thomas-Corr, Sunday Times
‘Once or twice a year, I discover a novelist who is so exciting to read I want to share their work with everyone I know – the kind of writer who makes me want to write fiction… It’s rare to find prose this spare that doesn’t feel affected, but Szalay handles surface and depth with skill, as only great novelists can. Flesh is a revelatory novel that will make you look afresh at every eastern European doorman or bouncer you encounter.’
Keiran Goddard, Guardian
‘There will be a temptation to pigeonhole Flesh as a novel about masculinity; its silences and its contortions, its frustrations and its codes. But while that is clearly a central concern, Szalay is also grappling with broader, knottier, more metaphysical issues. Because, at its heart, Flesh is about more than just the things that go unsaid: it is also about what is fundamentally unsayable, the ineffable things that sit at the centre of every life, hovering beyond the reach of language.’
Watch Stormzy read from Flesh
Read an extract from Flesh
‘When he’s fifteen, he and his mother move to a new town and he starts at a new school. It’s not an easy age to do that – the social order of the school is already well established and he has some difficulty making friends. After a while he does make one friend, another solitary individual. They sometimes hang out together after school in the new Western-style shopping mall that has just opened in the town.’
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Have you read Flesh or is it on your TBR pile? We’d love to know your thoughts on the Booker Prize 2025 winner in the comments below.
I just finished Flesh. It's gotten a lot of criticism and a lot of praise. It's hard to describe how I feel about this book...kinda transfixed...like not being able to look away from a train wreck. Deeply fascinated by Istvan whom I believe sadly embodies the personality and characteristics of many young men. It is a window into the soul of a seemingly souless character. Actually I thought all of the characters were amoral and soulless except Thomas. And it is he whom Istvan ends up saving. This is a book that will end up staying with me for a long time.
I haven’t read the other shortlisted entries yet and so can’t speak to the question of who should have won, but I can say that I devoured Flesh in a few days. Bravo