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Flesh

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025

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Flesh

By: David Szalay
Narrated by: Daniel Weyman
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**WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025**

Through chance, luck and choice, one man’s life takes him from a modest apartment in Hungary to the elite society of London – in this captivating new novel about the forces that make and break our lives

Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he becomes isolated, with his neighbour – a married woman – as his only companion. When a clandestine relationship begins between them, his life spirals out of control.

As the years pass, István moves from the army to the circles of London’s elite. His competing impulses for love, intimacy, status and wealth win him unimaginable riches, until they threaten to undo him completely.
‘Brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money’ David Nicholls
‘One of the most astonishing books I’ve ever read’ Dua Lipa
’So much searing insight into the way we live now’ Observer
‘I was tearing through Flesh, I never once slowed down’ Jennette McCurdy
‘Brilliance on every page’ Samantha Harvey
‘Hugely entertaining, gripping like a thriller’ The Times

© David Szalay 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

 Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Money Heartfelt Tear-jerking
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Critic reviews

Flesh is at once intricate and spacious, it flows both fast and deep. There's brilliance on every page. Szalay is an ingenious conductor of time, and of the fates and forces that give shape to a life (Samantha Harvey, author of Orbital)
Flesh is a wonderful novel – so brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money (David Nicholls)
A superb novel, written with great terse authority and allure: mordant, knowing and disturbingly wise (William Boyd)
This is a marvellous novel. Compelling and elegant, merciless and poignant. David Szalay is an extraordinary writer (Tessa Hadley)
I hope David Szalay wins the Booker this year... Flesh is a masterpiece, told with virtuosic economy... Pure brilliance from the first to the (devastating) last sentence (India Knight)
Refreshing, illuminating and true… a moving work of art with a plot that compels and surprises and devastates (Financial Times)
[A] compulsive look at wealth and power, love and sex… Szalay has that rare ability to convey entire galaxies in the sparest writing
Flesh…has ensnared me… It’s rare to find prose this spare that doesn’t feel affect, but Szalay handles surface and depth with skill, as only great novelists can. Flesh is a revelatory novel
Hypnotically tense and compelling… An astonishingly moving portrait of a man’s life (Booker Judges, 2025)
In István David Szalay has created a modern existential antihero in the grand tradition of Camus and Dostoevsky. Amid the random accidents and desultory decisions that shape his life, and come to feel like fate, he is at once a cool observer and a towering presence. Taut, spare and perfectly structured, Flesh reads like a gripping thriller which slowly gathers to itself the emotional power of classical tragedy (Carys Davies, author of Clear)
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unbelievable the number of times people say okay and the dialogue is very stilted and limited. the lack of the lack of vocabulary means that nuances and subtleties are not possible nice or interesting. nice or interesting. nice or interesting.

very limited vocabulary

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I found it hard to understand all the rave reviews for this book. It feels like just an account of someone’s life. Totally lacking in emotion or attachment to anyone. It all just happened to the main protagonist. No insight into his state of mind. The conversations were jarring to listen to; he said; she said; okay; sure; I don’t know, made up the majority of the conversations. Why women seemed to like him was implausible, he lacked any depth, humour, integrity, he was blank. The wife permitting all the trust loans, another blank personality. I have encountered a lot of modern literature that is on this vein and it’s dull.

Felt Empty

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All a bit of nothing really. Great narration but a bit of a waste of time to me.

Average story I’m unlikely to remember

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A story of an ordinary man from the communist block. A man like plenty. There are some important questions about the sense of our being, success, fate. The present tense narration brings the reader close to story, makes you stand next to the guy. A smart book about the life values.

Interesting narration lights up otherwise quite an ordinary story

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So realistic and true to life. We watch a whole lifetime play out in front of us, with the main protagonist making very few decisions for himself, just being buffeted about by events and circumstances. Being the mother of three adult sons, I recognised instantly the reticent, monosyllabic communication style of the young Istvan and watched him evolve into a loving father - just trying to make the right decisions for his little son. I was touched by the relationship between Istvan and his wife, as I was by the relationship between the adult Istvan and his mother. All of these came across as completely believable. I had to laugh at one of the few-ish laugh-out-loud moments: Istvan, being a central European, stated in passing that 24 degrees centigrade is not "swimming pool weather". An English person would be complaining of unbearable heat in 24 degrees!

And, by the way, the narration is perfect.

So true to life

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