David Szalay's Flesh -- the blokiest winner of the Booker prize [View all]

Source: The Times (London)

Flesh by David Szalay, 51, is almost certainly the most monosyllabic Booker prizewinner ever. With its protagonist who communicates in gruff, gruntish “yeahs”, “nos” and “okays”, Szalay’s riveting sixth book has the terse narrative style of a thriller. It might also be the blokiest winner — I mean the one most focused on masculinity. It seems likely to appeal to that elusive creature, the 21st-century male reader of novels, as much for its easy-on-the-attention-span pace as Szalay’s intriguing hero.

I’ve no doubt that Flesh will prove a popular choice, not least because it contains plenty of sex, sexily told. Szalay, who was Booker-shortlisted in 2016 for All That Man Is, which explored different stages in men’s lives, here follows an ex-offender named István over the course of 50 years. István is at once a highly specific product of a particular time and place (post-Communist Hungary, where Szalay’s father emigrated from) and an everyman. “My aim was to try to be as honest as possible about what it’s actually like to be a male body in the world,” Szalay said in an interview earlier this year. It’s a portrait that centres on male bodily demands — for sex, adventure, security — but also about where those bodily demands lead a person.

István is a species of working-class man who feels new to literary fiction. In most novels he would almost certainly be an extra — a goon, basically. He’s employed variously as a soldier, a driver, a strip club bouncer and bodyguard, and when he finally strikes gold, it’s as a property developer, though for much of the story he hardly seems ambitious. He’s quiet, brooding, emotionally detached, and from a certain vantage point, a passive receptacle for the desires of others — indeed, it’s his encounters with a randy older female neighbour that ultimately lead to the crime he commits as a teenager. This sets the course of his curious life.

Read more: https://www.thetimes.com/culture/books/article/booker-prize-2025-winner-david-szalay-flesh-shortlist-jqhtwnvbq