On a brisk Monday evening at London’s Old Billingsgate, a former fish market now transformed into a glittering events venue, David Szalay—an author with Canadian, Hungarian, and British roots—stepped onto the stage to accept the 2025 Booker Prize for fiction. The occasion marked a significant milestone, not just for Szalay, but for the literary world, as his novel Flesh was selected from 153 submitted works to receive the United Kingdom’s most prestigious fiction award.
“It’s fantastic, of course,” Szalay told BBC moments after the announcement, still sounding slightly stunned. “I did maybe too thorough a job of convincing myself that I wasn't going to win in order to get through the evening without too much stress, and now I have to catch up a bit in my head.”
Flesh is Szalay’s sixth novel, and it tells the story of István, a man whose journey spans from humble beginnings in a Hungarian housing estate to the exclusive circles of London’s ultra-wealthy. The novel’s narrative is notably sparse, with much of István’s life—his incarceration, his time in wartime Iraq—unfolding off the page. Critics have described the book as a “brilliantly spare portrait of a man” (The Guardian) and “a thrilling exploration of what it means to be alive.” The central character, emotionally detached and enigmatic, is rendered with such minimalism that his most common utterance is simply, “Okay.”
Roddy Doyle, the Irish writer who chaired this year’s judging panel, explained the judges’ unanimous decision: “What we particularly liked about Flesh was its singularity. It's just not like any other book. It's a dark book, but we all found it a joy to read.” Doyle added that the judges “loved the spareness of the writing. We loved how so much was revealed without us being overly aware that it was being revealed. … Watching this man grow, age, and learning so much about him—despite him, in a way.” Doyle, a former Booker winner himself, noted how the novel invites readers to look beyond the surface of working-class men, a group often overlooked in fiction.
The Booker Prize, established in 1969, is open to English-language novels from around the world and has a storied history of transforming writers’ careers. Past recipients include literary heavyweights like Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, and Hilary Mantel. This year, the judging panel featured a diverse group: authors Roddy Doyle, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, and Kiley Reid; literary critic Chris Power; and actress and literary imprint owner Sarah Jessica Parker, who described the judging process as “the privilege of a lifetime.” Parker shared her own passion for literature, admitting she often sneaks books onto set while filming, and said, “It’s been such an honour, and frankly there’s this nobility to the task that we felt such pride about.”
For Szalay, the journey to Flesh was anything but straightforward. He began writing the novel after abandoning a different project he’d labored over for four years, a decision that brought its own pressures. “This wasn’t necessarily a very easy book to write,” he admitted during his victory speech, as reported by CBC. “I think it’s very important that the novel-making community … embraces that sense of risk rather than shuns it.” Szalay reflected on the unique creative freedom the novel form allows, saying, “It can take aesthetic risks, formal risks, perhaps even moral risks, which many other forms, narrative forms, can't quite do to the same extent. I think part of the reason for that is just that novels are so relatively cheap to produce. All you need to do is keep one writer supplied with coffee and a few other essentials for a year or two, and you've got a novel. I mean, it's almost free.”
The minimalist style of Flesh has been both lauded and critiqued. Some reviewers were frustrated by the refusal to fill in the gaps of István’s story, while others praised the discipline and urgency in Szalay’s writing. Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, summed up the judges’ impression: “They found it spare, disciplined, urgent, honest and heartbreaking. With Flesh, they all agreed, David Szalay breaks new ground.” The novel’s use of white space—even blank pages to depict grief—struck a powerful chord with the panel. “Grief is depicted by a few blank pages,” Doyle explained. “I found it riveting, and I thought the dialogue was superb—and the absence of it was superb.”
The 2025 Booker shortlist was formidable, featuring five other novels: Flashlight by Susan Choi, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai, Audition by Katie Kitamura, The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovitz, and The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller. Each was discussed at length during the judges’ marathon five-hour meeting, but ultimately, Flesh stood apart. “It became very clear that this was the book that all five of us liked most,” Doyle said.
This year’s Booker Prize ceremony also had a touch of celebrity: pop star Stormzy recorded an extract of Flesh for a short film shown during the event, and Dua Lipa, who picked the novel for her book club, called it “a tense and gripping read.” The prize itself comes with a £50,000 (about $66,000) award—a sum that Szalay, when asked, said he’d partly spend on “a nice little holiday with a bit of it and put the rest in the bank.” Last year’s winner, Samantha Harvey, who handed Szalay the trophy, offered her own advice: “Buckle up, and get a good accountant.”
Szalay’s win marks the first time since 2019 that a Canadian-born author has claimed the Booker. Born in Montreal to a Hungarian father and Canadian mother, Szalay grew up in London and currently resides in Vienna. He was previously shortlisted for the Booker in 2016 for All That Man Is, another meditation on modern masculinity. As the literary world celebrates his victory, attention in Canada now turns to the upcoming Giller Prize ceremony, scheduled for November 17, 2025, underscoring the ongoing importance of literary recognition on both sides of the Atlantic.
With Flesh, David Szalay has delivered a novel that challenges and rewards, inviting readers to contemplate the unspoken and unseen forces that shape a life. The Booker judges’ decision stands as a testament to the enduring power—and risk—of spare, fearless storytelling.
