Hungarian-British author David Szalayon has won the 2025 Booker Prize for his fiction novel.
Szalay’s sixth work of fiction on a man’s life, ISTVÁN, from his youth to midlife. The judges had “never read anything like this”, said panel chair Roddy Doyle, who won the prize in 1993.
The plot opens with a startling incident that unfolds as the teenager István lives in his mother’s apartment complex in Hungary. Szalay then follows the protagonist as he spends time in the military before moving to London, where he begins working for the rich. Written in spare prose, the novel explores masculinity, class, migration, trauma, sex and power.
Szatay was announced as the winner of the £50,000 award at a ceremony held at London’s old bileggingsgate on Monday evening. He was previously shortlisted for the prize in 2016, for his novel All Man.
The decision to hand Szalay The Award “Unanimous”, said Doyle. Joining him on this year’s panel will be actor Sarah Jessica Parker, along with writers Chris Power, Ayọbámi Adébáyọ and Kiley Reid.
The book “Homes a working class person, who usually doesn’t get a lot of views”, said Doyle. “It gives us a certain kind of person” and “invites us to look behind the face.”
“If no one knows it, I was raised, for example, not to cry,” Doyle said. “I knew that and decided it was pointless,” but István was “that kind of person”.
“Szatay has written a novel about the big question: about what makes it extraordinary to be alive,” wrote Keiran Goddard in a Guardian Review of the novel. “STYLISTICALLY, the flesh is all bone. Szaray has always been a master of the flinty, spare sentence but in this novel he wipes things down even more harshly.”
Szalay’s novel leads a strong shortlist that includes Johnies’ Favorite Londa in Sonia, her first noi
Asked if there are any other novels that come close to challenging Szalay’s victory, Doyle said that “the answer is” Yes “unfair, a cruel one”.
Born in Montreal to a Hungarian mother and a Canadian mother, Szarka grew up in London. He lived in Lebanon and the UK, and now lives in Vienna. After graduating from Oxford, he worked as an executive executive, which became the inspiration for his debut novel, London and the south-east. He is also the author of the novels spring and the innocent, as well as the short story collection Chaos.
Writing in the Guardian over the weekend of his inspiration for the flesh, Szalay said that the novel was “viewed in the shadow of failure that he did not work for almost four years without working. He wanted the flesh “” in any way to express my feeling that our existence is a physical experience before it is anything else, that all its other aspects come from physicality”.
His win marks the 10th for publisher Jonathan Cape, a penguin imprint, which has the most wins in the prize’s history. Last year’s title of the year, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, was also published by Cape.
Other recent winners include PROPESIDADO AN ANDNCH, Shehan Karunatilara’s Maali Almeida’s Seven Months and Damon Galgut’s Promise.
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Flesh by David Szalay (vintage Publishing, £18.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy for £16.14 at Guardianshop.com. Shipping charges may apply.