Fleshpoint

The 2025 Booker Prize winner David Szalay maps the contours of masculinity in the contemporary world

- Vineetha Mokkil

CRITICS like to call Hungarian-British author David Szalay ‘a writers’ writer’.

On being awarded the 2025 Booker Prize for his novel Flesh, Szalay said that he had wanted “to write about life as a physical experience, about what it’s like to be a living body in the world.” The body in question in Flesh is that of István, a working-class Hungarian immigrant who struggles to find his footing in a fast-changing Europe. This is a ‘risky’ novel in terms of both style and theme. Szalay tracks István’s life in a relentlessly spare style, offering readers little to no authorial commentary. He trains his lens on a particular type of masculinity: verbally stunted, emotionally hazy, perpetually puzzled by the distance between desire and decisions.

Born in London, Szalay (51) grew up in London, has lived in Hungary, and is now based in Vienna. His mother is Canadian. His father, Hungarian. He is the first writer of Hungarian heritage to be awarded the Booker.

Over the last 16 years, Szalay’s books have been mapping the contours of masculinity in the contemporary world. They trace the lives of men on the move, outsiders navigating alien environments, ‘in-between people’ who don’t belong to any one place. Flesh is his sixth work of fiction. His debut novel, London and the South-East (2009), won critical acclaim and was awarded the Betty Trask and Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prizes. In 2016, his book All That Man Is, made it to the Booker shortlist. Many of Szalay’s characters are everyday men. The hero of London and the South-East slogs in telesales. Spring (2012) tells the story of James—an entrepreneur who struggles after the dotcom bubble goes bust. All That Man Is follows nine men of different ages, each weighed down by their own existential dilemmas.