The 2025 Booker Prize winning novel is ‘Flesh’ by David Szalay. Some months ago, I was offered a reading copy by the publisher so as it happens, I read it even before it was shortlisted for the prize.
As is so often the case with prize winning novels, it does not follow a formula, it does not cry out to be read on the beach under an umbrella. This book requires a little more work than your average summer blockbuster, but it offers you more in return. ‘Flesh’ is the story of Hungarian born Istvan, and we pick up his story at age 15 as he shifts to a new town with his mother. It is the story of what happens to Istvan and what does not, what Istvan wants to happen over the course of his life and mostly in spite of this, what does and does not happen. It sounds banal and, in many ways, it is – but as The New York Journal of Books says, “David Szalay’s art accomplishes what arithmetic can’t: The whole adds up to more than its individual components”.
The trajectory of Istvan’s life moves him from poverty into the army, by chance into finance and in and out of relationships, into and out of great wealth and ultimately back to almost where he started. Istvan is not a hugely likeable character and yet you find yourself hoping for his insight, hoping he will come right, and holding your breath when he does, somehow knowing it won’t last.
It is the stark realism of the writing, the developing complexity of one life lived and the questions about agency, desire and what makes a life worth living that make this novel compelling reading.
The publisher is printing more copies of the book as I write so ‘Flesh’ will be available at your local bookstore now!
