Booker Prize Winner 2025

The winner of the 2025 Booker Prize for fiction was announced today, with Hungarian British author David Szalay receiving the £50,000 prize for the novel, Flesh. 

Flesh follows Istvan's life from his lonely teenage years to his isolated middle age. Along the way he has an affair with a much older woman. A violent act impacts the course of his life. Istvan goes on to serve in the military, he then moves from Hungary to London where he works in security, interacting with the super wealthy. Istvan struggles with events outside his control. When longlisted, the judges praised Szalay's writing, saying 'using only the sparest of prose, this hypnotically tense and compelling book becomes an astonishingly moving portrait of a man’s life.'  

David Szalay was born in Montreal Canada to a Hungarian father and Canadian mother. He has lived in Lebanon, the UK, Hungary and Vienna. Flesh is Szalay's fifth novel. His debut novel, London and the South-East won the Betty Trask and Geoffrey Faber Memorial prizes in 2008. He was previously shortlisted for the Booker in 2016 for All That Man Is. 

Chair of the Judging panel, Roddy Doyle, said of Flesh:

The judges discussed the six books on the shortlist for more than five hours. The book we kept coming back to, the one that stood out from the other great novels, was Flesh – because of its singularity. We had never read anything quite like it. It is, in many ways, a dark book but it is a joy to read.

‘At the end of the novel, we don’t know what the protagonist, István, looks like but this never feels like a lack; quite the opposite. Somehow, it’s the absence of words – or the absence of István’s words – that allow us to know István. Early in the book, we know that he cries because the person he’s with tells him not to; later in life, we know he’s balding because he envies another man’s hair; we know he grieves because, for several pages, there are no words at all.

‘I don’t think I’ve read a novel that uses the white space on the page so well. It’s as if the author, David Szalay, is inviting the reader to fill the space, to observe – almost to create – the character with him. The writing is spare and that is its great strength. Every word matters; the spaces between the words matter. The book is about living, and the strangeness of living and, as we read, as we turn the pages, we’re glad we’re alive and reading – experiencing – this extraordinary, singular novel.’

I am delighted that Szalay was selected as winner. While I have not read Flesh, it is on my list! I had expected the prize to go to Kiran Desai for The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, although she is a previous Booker winner. 

If you missed it, here is the video of the announcement of David Szalay as winner and his acceptance speech.