David Szalay’s Flesh wins 2025 fiction award

British-Hungarian author David Szalay won this year’s Booker Prize for his novel Flesh, which the jury described as “extraordinary” and “a very special book”.

Flesh tells the story of a charming, enigmatic and emotionally independent man who moves through different stages of his life, from a housing estate in Hungary to the world of the ultra-rich in London.

Author Roddy Doyle, who chaired the judging panel, said: “What we particularly liked about Flesh was its uniqueness. It’s like no other book.” “It’s a dark book, but we all enjoyed reading it.”

Actress Sarah Jessica Parker was among the other Booker judges, while Flesh was won by Dua Lipa and Stormzy.

Szalay told the BBC he felt “a bit dazed” after winning the award and that it would take some time to “get used to it”.

“I did a very thorough job of convincing myself that maybe I wasn’t going to win so that I could get through the evening without too much stress, and now I just need to get my head around it a bit,” he said.

“But of course it’s gorgeous.”

Stormzy recorded a summary of the book short film It was played at the Booker Prize ceremony in London on Monday.

And Dua Lipa called it a “taut and riveting read.” picked it for book club last month.

Flesh received generally rave reviews.

The Guardian called this out “a brilliantly spare portrait of one man” and “a thrilling exploration of what it means to survive.” The Sunday Times praised How Szalay uses “just one character, Istvan, to describe these three stages of modern man.”

Critics and judges also praised Szalay’s stripped-down, minimalist dialogue and descriptions.

“We loved the simplicity of the writing,” Doyle explained. “We loved how so much was revealed without being overly aware that it was being revealed.

“It’s truly remarkable how he uses white space. Grief is depicted with a few blank pages.”

Referring to his writing style, Doyle added: “I found it riveting and thought the dialogue was excellent – ​​and the absence of it was perfect.”

Booker organizers described Flesh as “a meditation on class, power, intimacy, migration and masculinity” and called it “a compelling portrait of a single man and formative experiences that can resonate across a lifetime.”

The jury spent more than five hours debating the six shortlisted novels before deciding on the winner. Doyle said that “it became very clear that this was the book that all five of us loved best.”

“They found it spare, disciplined, urgent, honest and heartbreaking,” said Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation.

“They all agreed that with Flesh, David Szalay had broken new ground. I share the judges’ enthusiasm for the work of an author who has written with ferocious and unyielding commitment over many years.”

Flesh is Szalay’s sixth novel and was previously nominated for All That Man Is Booker in 2016, another exploration of modern masculinity.

As this year’s winner, he raised £50,000.

Other shortlisted novels were:

• Susan Choi – Flashlight
• Kiran Desai – The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
• Katie Kitamura – Audition
• Ben Markovits – The Rest of Our Lives
• Andrew Miller – Land of Winter

The Booker Prize is the United Kingdom’s most prestigious fiction prize and is open to novels written in the English language.

Past winners include Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Bernardine Evaristo, Hilary Mantel and Douglas Stuart.