2025Booker 2025
Flesh
David Szalay · b. 1974 · England
Why it matters
Taciturn Hungarian István drifts from an impoverished childhood through military service, prison, and an improbable rise into London's moneyed elite, entire years vanishing between paragraphs. Szalay's terse, gapped 2025 Booker Prize winner turns one unexamined life into something close to tragedy.
At a glance
psychological noveltragedy
Difficulty 5/10fast pace352 pagesTerse, elliptical prose deliberately omits connective tissue, leaving readers to infer what happened between scenes.
Deep dive
What to expect from a Booker winner about one man's entire life, when the novel refuses to narrate most of it.
