Hungarian-British author David Szalay wins the 2025 Booker Prize with Flesh, a deeply introspective story about the rise and fall of an immigrant in London. The ceremony at London’s Old Billingsgate celebrated Szalay’s ability to capture human vulnerability and ambition through spare yet powerful prose.
About the Winning Novel: Flesh
Flesh is the story of Istvan, a quiet Hungarian émigré whose life unfolds from a youthful affair to his struggles in Britain and then his immersion into London’s elite circles. The novel is an investigation of how, through time, class, masculinity and displacement shape identity. The judges termed it a meditation upon power, migration and intimacy that lingers long after reading.
Szalay’s Reaction & the Judges Praise
Szalay said humorously in his acceptance speech that he had asked his editor once if a novel titled Flesh could ever win the Booker Prize. “You have your answer,” he said, holding the trophy.
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Irish novelist Roddy Doyle, one of the members of the judging panel, called Flesh a book about living and the strangeness of living. The decision was unanimous after a five-hour debate with judges praising Szalay’s use of white space and silence as part of storytelling.
Who is David Szalay
Szalay, 51, was born in Canada, raised in the UK and lives in Vienna. He has long explored notions of belonging and dislocation. His father was Hungarian and he often felt himself regarded as a foreigner in both Hungary and Britain is a fate shared by his protagonist. He reached the Booker shortlist in 2016 for All That Man Is and Flesh is his sixth novel.
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Other Contenders & the Prize Legacy
Szalay beat off a strong shortlist that included Kiran Desai, Andrew Miller, Susan Choi, Katie Kitamura, and Ben Markovits to win the prize. Though front-runners were believed to be Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny and Miller’s The Land in Winter, Flesh ultimately captured the judges imagination.
Since its inception in 1969, the Booker Prize has been instrumental in shaping literary history, having awarded literary icons such as Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood and Arundhati Roy.
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Disclaimer: This article is based on publicly available information. Details may evolve as official Booker Prize statements are updated.
