Author David Szalay, who holds Canadian, Hungarian, and British citizenship, has won the 2025 Booker Prize for fiction for his novel Flesh — an understated, powerful portrayal of one man’s journey from humble beginnings in Hungary to immense wealth in Britain.
The 51-year-old writer triumphed over five other finalists, including frontrunners Andrew Miller of the U.K. and India’s Kiran Desai. The prestigious literary award comes with a £50,000 ($66,000) prize and typically leads to a surge in book sales and global recognition.
Chosen from 153 entries, Flesh was the unanimous selection of the Booker judging panel, which included Irish novelist Roddy Doyle and actor Sarah Jessica Parker. Doyle described the book as “a story about living — and the strangeness of living.”
Written in a minimalist style, Flesh follows István, a quiet, working-class man, through his youth in Hungary, immigration struggles in Britain, and eventual rise to London’s elite circles. Szalay said he began the novel after scrapping a different project he had spent four years on, wanting instead to create “something partly Hungarian, partly English,” centered on “life as a physical experience.”
At the awards ceremony in London’s Old Billingsgate, Szalay thanked the judges for honoring what he called a “risky” book. Laughing, he recalled once asking his editor whether a novel titled Flesh could ever win the Booker. “You have your answer,” he said.
Doyle, who chaired the judging panel, said the book shines a light on a character type rarely seen in fiction — a working-class man like those he himself once wrote about. “It makes you look again at men you might pass on the street and think you understand,” he said.
Born in Montreal to a Hungarian father and Canadian mother, Szalay grew up in the U.K. and now lives in Vienna. He previously made the Booker shortlist in 2016 for All That Man Is, a collection exploring nine different men’s lives.
Critics have both praised and challenged Flesh for its restraint — leaving key parts of István’s life, such as his time in prison and service in Iraq, off the page — and for its deliberately opaque protagonist, whose most frequent response is simply “Okay.” Szalay acknowledged this, saying, “He doesn’t explain himself. He isn’t articulate. I wasn’t sure how readers would react to that.”
The judges, however, admired the subtlety. “We loved how much was revealed without being stated,” Doyle said. “If those gaps were filled, it would be less of a book.”
Since its founding in 1969, the Booker Prize has become one of the most influential literary honors in the world, launching the careers of writers like Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Arundhati Roy, Ian McEwan, and 2024 winner Samantha Harvey for Orbital.
Szalay said he hasn’t yet planned how to spend the prize money beyond taking “a nice little holiday” and saving the rest. Harvey, who presented the award, offered one final piece of advice: “Buckle up — and get a good accountant.”