Booker Prize: David Szalay’s Flesh wins 2025 fiction prize

British-Hungarian author David Szalay won this year’s Booker Prize for his novel Flesh, which the jury described as “extraordinary” and “a very special book.”

Flesh tells the story of a seductive, enigmatic and emotionally distant man who goes through different phases of his life, from a Hungarian housing estate to the world of the ultra-rich in London.

“What we especially liked about Flesh was its uniqueness. It’s just not like any other book,” said author Roddy Doyle, who chaired the judging panel. “It’s a dark book, but we all found it a pleasure to read.”

Actress Sarah Jessica Parker was among the other Booker judges, while Flesh was championed by Dua Lipa and Stormzy.

Szalay told the BBC that he felt “a little dazed” after winning the award and that it was going to take a while to “sink in.”

“Maybe I tried too hard to convince myself I wasn’t going to win so I could get through the night without too much stress, and now I have to mentally play catch-up a little bit,” he said.

“But it’s fantastic, of course.”

Stormzy recorded an extract from the book for a short film which was screened at the Booker Prize ceremony in London on Monday.

And Dua Lipa described it as a “tense, gripping read” when she picked it for her book club last month.

Flesh has had rave reviews across the board.

The Guardian called it a “brilliantly spare portrait of a man” and a “thrilling exploration of what it means to be alive”, while the Sunday Times praised how Szalay uses “just one character, Istvan, to tell these three stages of modern man”.

Critics and judges have also praised Szalay’s simple, minimalist dialogue and descriptions.

“We loved the sobriety of the writing,” Doyle explained. “We loved how so many things are revealed without us being too aware of it.

“It’s just extraordinary how he uses white space. Pain is described in a few blank pages.”

Referring to the writing style, Doyle added: “I found it fascinating and I thought the dialogue was superb… and the absence of it was superb.”

Booker organizers described Flesh as “a meditation on class, power, intimacy, migration and masculinity,” and called it “a compelling portrait of a man and the formative experiences that can reverberate throughout a lifetime.”

The judges spent more than five hours discussing the six shortlisted novels before deciding on the winner. Doyle said it became “very clear that this was the book the five of us liked best.”

“They found him sober, disciplined, urgent, honest and heartbreaking,” said Gaby Wood, executive director of the Booker Prize Foundation.

“With Flesh, everyone agreed, David Szalay breaks new ground. I share the judges’ enthusiasm for the work of an author who has been writing with fierce and absolute commitment for many years.”

Flesh is Szalay’s sixth novel, and he was previously nominated for the Booker for All That Man Is, another exploration of modern masculinity, in 2016.

He raised £50,000 as this year’s winner.

The other shortlisted novels were:

• Susan Choi – Lantern
• Kiran Desai – The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
• Katie Kitamura – Audition
• Ben Markovits – The Rest of Our Lives
• Andrew Miller – The Earth in Winter

The Booker Prize is the UK’s most prestigious fiction prize and is open to novels written in English.

Previous winners include Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Bernardine Evaristo, Hilary Mantel and Douglas Stuart.