Hungarian-British author David Szalay has won the 2025 Booker prize for his novel Flesh.
Szalay’s sixth work of fiction traces the life of one man, István, from his youth to midlife. The judges “had never read anything quite like it”, said panel chair Roddy Doyle, who won the prize in 1993. “It is, in many ways, a dark book, but it is a joy to read.”
Flesh opens with a shocking incident that unfolds while teenage István is living in an apartment complex with his mother in Hungary. Szalay then follows the protagonist as he spends time in the military before moving to London, where he begins working for the uber-rich. Written in spare prose, the novel explores masculinity, class, migration, trauma, sex and power.
Szalay was announced as the winner of the £50,000 award at a ceremony held in Old Billingsgate in London on Monday evening. He was previously shortlisted for the prize in 2016, for his novel All That Man Is.
When was the Booker Prize launched?
It was first awarded in 1969 to promote reading and literature. Publishers Tom Maschler and Graham C. Greene secured financial backing from Guyana-based conglomerate Booker McConnell that had recently expanded its interests to literary estates.
Apparently Ian Fleming had had something to do with it?
That’s right. Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, and a regular golfing companion of Booker chairman Jock Campbell, died in 1964. Before Fleming’s death, Campbell had launched an “authors’ division” within Booker, paying £100,000 for a 51 per cent share of the profits from Fleming’s worldwide royalties. The Booker Authors’ Division soon expanded its reach, acquiring the literary estates of Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer, Harold Pinter, and others, turning the company’s colonial fortunes toward the commerce of the imagination.
'Honest and heartbreaking'
The judges spent more than five hours discussing the six shortlisted novels before settling on the winner. Doyle said it became "very clear that this was the book that all five of us liked most".
"They found it spare, disciplined, urgent, honest and heartbreaking," said Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation.
"With Flesh, they all agreed, David Szalay breaks new ground. I share the judges' excitement over the work of an author who has been writing with ferocious and stark commitment for many years."
Flesh is Szalay's sixth novel, and he was previously nominated for the Booker for All That Man Is, another exploration of modern masculinity, in 2016.
He collected £50,000 as this year's winner.
The other shortlisted novels were:
- Susan Choi - Flashlight
- Kiran Desai - The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
- Katie Kitamura - Audition
- Ben Markovits - The Rest of Our Lives
- Andrew Miller - The Land in Winter
The Booker Prize is the UK's most prestigious fiction award and is open to novels written in the English language.
Past winners include Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Bernardine Evaristo, Hilary Mantel and Douglas Stuart.
