Booker Prize 2025: David Szalay honoured for Flesh, a powerful portrait of an ordinary man’s life
Hungarian-British writer David Szalay has won this year’s Booker Prize for fiction with his novel Flesh, the story of an ordinary man’s life over several decades.
Szalay, who was previously shortlisted in 2016 for All That Man Is, received STG50,000 ($A100,822) and a trophy, presented to him by last year’s winner Samantha Harvey.
Flesh was described as an “extraordinary, singular novel” by the chairman of the judges, Roddy Doyle.
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Szalay’s sixth work of fiction, a meditation on power, tracks the life of teenage Istvan from Hungary, who eventually moves from the army to the company of London’s super-rich.
Former Booker Prize winner Mr Doyle said: “The judges discussed the six books on the shortlist for more than five hours.
“The book we kept coming back to, the one that stood out from the other great novels, was Flesh - because of its singularity. We had never read anything quite like it. It is, in many ways, a dark book but it is a joy to read.
“At the end of the novel, we don’t know what the protagonist, Istvan, looks like but this never feels like a lack; quite the opposite.
“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 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.”
The panel considered 153 books and was looking for the best work of long-form fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between October 1, 2024 and September 30, 2025.
Previous winners of the Booker Prize include Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood and Dame Hilary Mantel.
