Flesh

Through chance, luck and choice, one man’s life takes him from a modest apartment in Hungary to the elite society of London – in this captivating new novel about the forces that make and break our lives

Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour – a married woman close to his mother’s age – as his only companion. As these encounters shift into a clandestine relationship, István’s life spirals out of control.

Years later, rising through the ranks from the army to the elite circles of London's super-rich, he navigates the twenty-first century's tides of money and power. Torn between love, intimacy, status, and wealth, his newfound riches threaten to undo him completely.

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 Orbital

Flesh is a wonderful novel – so brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money -- David Nicholls

A superb novel, written with great terse authority and allure: mordant, knowing and disturbingly wise -- William Boyd

This is a marvellous novel. Compelling and elegant, merciless and poignant. David Szalay is an extraordinary writer -- Tessa Hadley

I hope David Szalay wins the Booker this year...Flesh is a masterpiece, told with virtuosic economy...Pure brilliance from the first to the (devastating) last sentence -- India Knight

‘Refreshing, illuminating and true… a moving work of art with a plot that compels and surprises and devastates’ -- Financial Times

[A] compulsive look at wealth and power, love and sex… Szalay has that rare ability to convey entire galaxies in the sparest writing ― i

Flesh…has ensnared me… It’s rare to find prose this spare that doesn’t feel affect, but Szalay handles surface and depth with skill, as only great novelists can. Flesh is a revelatory novel ― Sunday Times

Hypnotically tense and compelling… An astonishingly moving portrait of a man’s life -- Booker Judges, 2025

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

About the Author

David Szalay is the author of four previous works of fiction: Spring, The Innocent, London and the South-East, for which he was awarded the Betty Trask and Geoffrey Faber Memorial prizes, and All That Man Is, for which he was awarded the Gordon Burn prize and Plimpton Prize for Fiction, and shortlisted for the Man Booker prize. Born in Canada, he grew up in London, and now lives in Budapest.