David Szalay’s "Flesh"— a bold, unsettling novel—wins the 2025 Booker Prize

In a ceremony in London on Monday, November 10, David Szalay was awarded the coveted Booker Prize for Flesh. The author received £50,000 and a trophy, presented to him by last year’s winner, Samantha Harvey.

The title was picked from among six books on the shortlist: Flashlight by Susan Choi; The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai; Audition by Katie Kitamura; The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovitz; The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller; and Flesh by David Szalay.   

The book 

Written in spare prose and spanning decades, Flesh follows the story of István, a 15-year-old boy living with his mother in a Hungarian block. He is drawn into a clandestine affair with a married neighbour, and then propelled into detention, war, and an uneasy migration to London’s elite. 

 

Szalay starts his story from a point of trauma and follows the protagonist’s journey through the years, where his life is shaped by the goodwill or self-interest of strangers. At its core, Flesh is less about dramatic plot twists than existential drift. 

One of the most potent features of the novel is its sharp and economical style, leaving the reader to wonder how much might be conveyed through a narrative where the protagonist rarely speaks. But in that scarcity lies the hall of mirrors of class, desire, power and decline. It cycles through decades, locations, and social tiers, all with minimal explanation. Curiously, the lack of glue forces the reader to fill in the gaps and become complicit in the narrative.

Szalay is no stranger to the award’s orbit—his earlier novel, All That Man Is, was shortlisted in 2016—and his current win signifies how work which might come across as fragmented, or even unresolved, but lyrical in its restraint, can still command centre stage.

The jury 

Flesh was selected as the winning book by the 2025 judging panel, chaired by 1993 Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle, who is also the first Booker Prize winner to chair a Booker judging panel. He was joined by fellow judges: Booker Prize-longlisted novelist Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀; award-winning actor, producer and publisher Sarah Jessica Parker; writer, broadcaster and literary critic Chris Power; and New York Times bestselling and Booker Prize-longlisted author Kiley Reid. They reviewed 153 titles to find the finest long-form fiction by global voices—works written in English and published in the UK or Ireland between October 2024 and September 2025.

Whilst Kiran Desai's and Andrew Miller's titles were touted as favourites, Flesh walked away with the honour. In an era crowded with novels rich in backstory and explanation, the novel stood out for what it withheld. The judging panel spent five hours deliberating. The judges applauded Szalay’s “creative courage” and described the novel as “dark but a joy to read.” “We had never read anything quite like it,” said Roddy Doyle.

All images: Getty Images 

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