David Szalay has won the 2025 Booker Prize for his novel Flesh, becoming the first Hungarian-British author to win one of the top awards in the English-speaking world.
Written in spare prose, characterised by brevity and a lack of unnecessary detail, the book follows a man caught in a series of events beyond his control over decades. It charts his rise from a housing estate in Hungary to the mansions of London's super-rich.
“A meditation on class, power, intimacy, migration and masculinity, Flesh is a compelling portrait of one man, and the formative experiences that can reverberate across a lifetime,” organisers of the award ceremony in London said in a statement.
In addition to the £50,000 ($66,000) prize for the winner, as well as a £2,500 award to each of the shortlisted authors and translators, the writers also gain a boost in popularity and benefit from increased book sales.
“Even though my father is Hungarian, I never felt entirely at home in Hungary. I suppose, I’m always a bit of an outsider there and living away from the UK and London for so many years, I also had a similar feeling about London,” Szalay told BBC Radio.
“I really wanted to write a book that stretched between Hungary and London and involved a character who was not quite at home in either place.”
The novel was the Canadian-born author's sixth work of fiction. He was shortlisted in 2016 for his book All That Man Is, which tells the story of nine men at various life stages.
“We had never read anything quite like it. It is, in many ways, a dark book but it is a joy to read,” Roddy Doyle, chair of judges this year, said in the statement shared by the organisers.
“I don’t think I’ve read a novel that uses the white space on the page so well. It’s as if the author … is inviting the reader to fill the space, to observe – almost to create – the character with him.”
Doyle's fellow judges included Sarah Jessica Parker, Chris Power, Ayobami Adebayo and Kiley Reid.
