David Szalay’s ‘Flesh’ wins the Booker Prize 2025

           Congratulations to David Szalay, Hungarian-British author, who won the Booker Prize 2025 for his novel, ‘Flesh’. The award was presented to Szalay at a ceremony in London on 10 November, 2025, by the last year’s winner, Samantha Harvey.

           Szalay is the first Hungarian-British author to win the Booker Prize. His book, All That Man Is, had been shortlisted for the prize in 2016. Flesh is his sixth work of fiction. Szalay has also written several radio dramas for the BBC.

           A spare but propulsive novel, Flesh follows a man from adolescence to old age as he is unravelled by a series of events beyond his grasp. It asks profound questions about what drives a life, what makes it worth living, and what breaks it.

           Speaking of Flesh, David Szalay said, “I wanted to write a book with a Hungarian end and an English end, since I was living very much between the two countries at the time and felt that that needed to be reflected in my choice of subject.”

           The Judges panel comprised Chris Power, Kiley Reid, Roddy Doyle (the Chair of judges), Sarah Jessica Parker and Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀.

           “It is, in many ways, a dark book, but it is a joy to read,” said Roddy Doyle. “The writing is spare and that is its great strength. Every word matters; the spaces between the words matter. The book is about living, and the strangeness of living.”

           The other shortlisted books were The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai, Flashlight by Susan Choi, Audition by Katie Kitamura, The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits, and The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller.

“The judges discussed the six books on the shortlist for more than five hours,” Roddy Doyle said. “The book we kept coming back to, the one that stood out from the other great novels, was Flesh – because of its singularity.”

David Szalay was born in Canada, grew up in London and now lives in Vienna.

About the Author