David Szalay, a Canadian-Hungarian-British writer, has won the Booker Prize for Fiction with his masterpiece Flesh, a novel about an ordinary man’s life told through its silences as much as its events.
Szalay, 51, triumphed over five finalists, including Andrew Miller and Kiran Desai, earning £50,000 ($66,000). The judges—among them Roddy Doyle and Sarah Jessica Parker—unanimously selected the book from 153 entries.
Flesh follows István, a Hungarian immigrant whose quiet journey spans love, struggle, and success in Britain. Doyle praised it as “a book about living, and the strangeness of living,” noting its power in what’s left unsaid.
At the London award ceremony, Szalay thanked the panel for honoring his “risky” novel. “I once asked if a book called Flesh could win the Booker Prize,” he said. “Now we have the answer.”
Critics admired the novel’s spare style and emotional restraint, though some found its gaps challenging. Szalay, previously shortlisted in 2016 for All That Man Is, joins a distinguished list of winners including Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, and Arundhati Roy.
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