Flesh: WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025

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‘WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025, David Szalay’s captivating and astonishingly moving novel about the forces that make and break our lives

‘Brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money’ David Nicholls

‘I was tearing through [Flesh], I never once slowed down’ Jennette McCurdy

‘Brilliance on every page’ Samantha Harvey

‘So much searing insight into the way we live now’ Observer

Through chance, luck and choice, one man’s life takes him from a modest apartment in Hungary to the elite society of London – in this captivating new novel about the forces that make and break our lives

Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he becomes isolated, with his neighbour – a married woman – as his only companion. When a clandestine relationship begins between them, his life spirals out of control.

As the years pass, István moves from the army to the circles of London’s elite. His competing impulses for love, intimacy, status and wealth win him unimaginable riches, until they threaten to undo him completely.

‘An astonishingly moving portrait of a man’s life’ Booker Prize Judges, 2025
‘A revelatory novel’ Sunday Times
‘Pure brilliance from the first to the (devastating) last sentence’ India Knight
‘Refreshing, illuminating and true’ Financial Times
‘One of the most astonishing books I’ve ever read’ Dua Lipa
‘Hugely entertaining, gripping like a thriller’ The Times
‘Visceral and compelling’ Gary Stevenson
‘Exciting, propulsive, emotional’ Sarah Jessica Parker