Winner of the 2025 Booker Prize: FLESH by David Szalay

Szalay uses his signature spare prose to unsparing effect in this novel that aligns surface and depth, style and plot to portray a protagonist unable to achieve agency in a world that expects him to dominate. “You have no way of knowing whether these experiences that you’re having are universal or entirely specific.”
“David Szalay’s novel follows István from his teenage years on a Hungarian housing estate to borstal, and from soldiering in Iraq to his career as personal security for London’s super-rich. In many ways István is stereotypically masculine — physical, impulsive, barely on speaking terms with his own feelings (and for much of the novel barely speaking: he must rank among the more reticent characters in literature). But somehow, using only the sparest of prose, this hypnotically tense and compelling book becomes an astonishingly moving portrait of a man’s life.” —Booker Prize judges’ citation
”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.” — Roddy Doyle, Booker judges spokesperson
Find out more:

• Insider/outsider.

• Read an extract.

• An incident on the stairs.

• A general crisis in the idea of progress.

• Does he really want anything or is he told what he should want?

• Life as a physical experience.

• Put through the wringer.

• A living body in the world.

• Read the third chapter.

• Acknowledging failure.

• Books inspire flesh.

• You have your answer.