David Szalay wins Booker Prize for ‘Flesh’

• David Szalay won the Booker Prize for his novel ‘Flesh’ on November 10.

• He received £50,000 and a trophy, presented to him by last year’s winner Samantha Harvey, at a ceremony held at Old Billingsgate in London. 

• The panel considered 153 books and were looking for the best work of long-form fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between October 1, 2024 and September 30, 2025. 

• The panel was chaired by critically acclaimed writer and 1993 Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle.

• Indian novelist Kiran Desai, who won in 2006, was also short-listed for the Prize for her novel ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’.

Who is David Szalay?

• David Szalay, 51, is the first Hungarian-British writer to win the Booker Prize.

• Born in Canada, Szalay has lived in Lebanon, the UK, Hungary, and now Vienna. 

• He worked as a financial advertising sales executive in the City of London before embarking on his writing career. 

• In addition to writing novels, Szalay is an accomplished writer of BBC radio dramas and short stories. In 2019 he won the Edge Hill Prize for his short story collection ‘Turbulence’.

• This year’s prize marked his second Booker shortlisting – his first was in 2016 for ‘All That Man Is’, which was also awarded the Gordon Burn Prize and George Plimpton Prize for Fiction. 

• Szalay won the Betty Trask and Geoffrey Faber Memorial prizes in 2008 for his first novel, ‘London and the South-East’.

What is the book ‘Flesh’ about?

Written in spare prose, ‘Flesh’ – Szalay’s sixth work of fiction – is a propulsive novel about a man who is unravelled by a series of events beyond his grasp. Spanning decades, it charts Istvan’s 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. 

The Booker Prize

• The Booker Prize awards any work of long form fiction originally written in English and published in the UK and Ireland in the year of the prize, regardless of the nationality of their author. The work of long form fiction must be an original work in English (not a translation) and published by a registered UK or Irish imprint. Self-published works of long form fiction are not eligible. 

• The Booker Prize is worth £50,000 to the winner. It is awarded to the author of the best, eligible full-length work of long form fiction in the opinion of the judges. In addition, £2,500 is awarded to each of the six shortlisted authors.

• The Booker Prize for Fiction was first awarded in 1969.

• Previous winners of the prize include Salman Rushdie, J.M. Coetzee, Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood, Hilary Mantel, Marlon James, Bernardine Evaristo and Douglas Stuart.

International Booker Prize

• The International Booker Prize, formerly known as the Man Booker International Prize, has been awarded since 2005, when it was won by Albanian writer Ismail Kadare.

• It is awarded annually for a single book, translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland. 

• It is a sister prize to the Booker Prize.