WINNER OF THE 2025 BOOKER PRIZE AND A NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Finalist for the Kirkus Prize | Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence
From “the shrewdest writer on contemporary masculinity we have” (Esquire), a “captivating...hypnotic...virtuosic” (The Baffler) novel about a man whose life veers off course due to a series of unforeseen circumstances.
Teenaged István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and is soon isolated, drawn instead into a series of events that leave him forever a stranger to peers, his mother, and himself. In the years that follow, István is born along by the goodwill, or self-interest, of strangers, charting a rocky yet upward trajectory that lands him further from his childhood, and the defining events that abruptly ended it, than he could possibly have imagined.
A collection of intimate moments over the course of decades, Flesh chronicles a man at odds with himself—estranged from and by the circumstances and demands of a life not entirely under his control and the roles that he is asked to play. Shadowed by the specter of past tragedy and the apathy of modernity, the tension between István and all that alienates him hurtles forward until sudden tragedy again throws life as he knows it in jeopardy.
“Spare and detached on the page, lush in resonance beyond it” (NPR), Flesh traces the imperceptible but indelible contours of unresolved trauma and its aftermath amid the precarity and violence of an ever-globalizing Europe with incisive insight, unyielding pathos, and startling humanity.
About the Author
David Szalay is the author of Turbulence, London and the South-East, and All That Man Is. His novels have won and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and he has been awarded the Gordon Burn Prize and The Paris Review Plimpton Prize for Fiction. Born in Canada, he grew up in London, and now lives in Vienna.
Praise For…
WINNER OF THE 2025 BOOKER PRIZE
A New York Times Notable Book of 2025
Named a Best Book of the Year by the New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Vogue, Vulture, NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, Newsweek, Publishers Weekly, The Economist, Kirkus Reviews, the Associated Press, LitHub, Publishers Marketplace, The Telegraph (UK), The Times (UK), Globe and Mail (UK), and the Independent (UK)
"The uncommonly gifted Hungarian-English novelist David Szalay… offers unvarnished scenes from a lonely, rags-to-riches life…Szalay’s simplicity is, like Hemingway’s, the fatty sort that resonates." —The New York Times Book Review
"Astonishing...sometimes when I'm reading, one of the things I'm looking for is, how has this person made the novel new? And for me, this novel [is] new...Extraordinary." —Zadie Smith, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Fraud
"Singular, exciting, propulsive, emotional." —Sarah Jessica Parker, producer and a 2025 Booker Prize Judge
"As István’s life accumulates, [Flesh] only grows more captivating, more hypnotic, the question of freedom more charged… Instead of providing answers, Szalay poses inquiry, after inquiry, denying us what a lesser writer might feel compelled to provide...virtuosic." —The Baffler
"Reckoning, in a clear-eyed and reasonable way, with the reality of fate’s cold indifference...[Szalay is] a master of the flinty, spare sentence...at its heart, Flesh is about more than just the things that go unsaid: it is also about what is fundamentally unsayable, the ineffable things that sit at the centre of every life, hovering beyond the reach of language" —The Guardian
"[Szalay] is one of a handful of writers who seem to have been born whole as novelists...A precise and relentless anatomist of male fecklessness, violence, opportunism, addiction, self-interest, and vanity." —LA Review of Books
"Spare and detached on the page, lush in resonance beyond it, Szalay's new novel reads a bit like an immigrant bildungsroman flavored with Albert Camus." —NPR
"Szalay’s cool, remote novel tells the rags-to-riches story of a lonely young man who grows up with his mother in a housing estate in Hungary. Among its primary subjects is male alienation: Even as the hero advances toward the redoubts of privilege, he feels like a bystander to his own life, with the detachment of a survivor. Yet Szalay lets us feel his inchoate longing for meaning and connection." —Editor's Choice, New York Times Book Review
"I remain haunted by [this] book...with Flesh, Szalay has done something quite special." —Chicago Tribune
"[Szalay is] the shrewdest writer on contemporary masculinity we have...Flesh follows its protagonist, István, from a Hungarian boyhood characterised by isolation, hardship, and misunderstanding to a London adulthood characterised by isolation, luxury, and misunderstanding...Written in Szalay’s boldly spare style, Flesh is as potent a portrait of the myth of free will as I can remember. It’s also a page-turner. You’ll race through it." —Esquire (UK)
"[David Szalay] is a master at probing the insecurities and regrets of men… A boon for fans of Szalay’s straightforward, humane fiction in that it has yielded his best work to date in Flesh, a gentle yet deeply affecting novel...If you’ve ever woken up to the realization that your life has become something you never planned for, anticipated, or desired, you’ll likely find Flesh all too human." —The Boston Globe
"[Szalay] writes with great formal rigor about the foot soldiers of contemporary blokedom…small moments of realist precision are one of the great pleasures of [his] prose….The achievement of Flesh is that it will withstand...critical reflection. This is partly because a great deal of rigorous thinking about how to represent men’s minds and men’s bodies has been left implicit in the book, and partly because of the care with which Szalay has brought his angry, innocent, constricted hero to life. Add enough small instances of precision and the whole will, in the end, stand clear, will live. The short, bland sentences remorselessly add up, like life. István lives. Even if, in the end, he isn’t really okay." —New York Review of Books
"A man’s life is dramatised in a few crucial stages, from a youthful sexual relationship with an older woman in Hungary to a stint as a multi-millionaire in Britain and then on to uncertainty after a personal tragedy. The author’s elegant, stripped-back prose powers a narrative rich in insight and pathos." —The Economist
"Hypnotic...We witness István proceed through the world like a half-feral animal, helpless to his instincts, terrible and strangely pitiable...Mr. Szalay turns a cold gaze on that those urges and makes no promises that we’ll be comfortable with what he sees." —Wall Street Journal
"An indelible portrait of male alienation." —People
"Unsparing...[a] cold, propulsive tale of estrangement and alienation, Szalay captures not just the utter strangeness, but also the possibilities, of modern life." —Foreign Policy
"A potent new page-turner by David Szalay presents a distinctively complex depiction of modern masculinity." —4 Columns
"Szalay’s straightforward, spare prose helps propel the novel as the effects of that tragedy reverberate throughout his life… The power of Flesh is Szalay’s ability to let these moments speak for themselves, letting these simple interactions tell a tragic story.” —Associated Press
"Szalay offers a heartbreaking and revelatory portrait of a taciturn Hungarian man who serially attempts to build a new life after his traumatic adolescence… Propulsive… This tragedy will leave readers in awe." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"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 Booker Prize-winning author of Orbital
"I can’t think of another book that has lately haunted me more than David Szalay’s Flesh—a book that so majestically and so beautifully depicts our journeys through this ever-changing world; and how we’re all caught and carried by time and tide. When the world tests us, this is the story we’ll return to, the one that will make us want to keep faith and believe, not only in the power of literature, but in each other." —Paul Yoon, author of The Hive and the Honey
"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
"Flesh is a wonderful novel—so brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money." —David Nicholls, author of You Are Here
