British-Hungarian Author Wins 2025 Booker Prize
British-Hungarian author David Szalay has been awarded the 2025 Booker Prize for his novel “Flesh,” a dark and compelling story that explores the life of a Hungarian emigre. The prize, worth 50,000 pounds ($66,000, €57,000), recognizes the best English-language novel published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. It also brings significant recognition and increased sales for the winner.
Szalay, who is 51 years old, beat five other finalists to win the prestigious literary award. His novel “Flesh” is written in sparse prose and follows the life of a working-class Hungarian man over several decades. The narrative spans from his teenage relationship with an older woman to his time as a struggling immigrant in Britain and later working for the ultra-wealthy in London.
“I wanted to write a book with a Hungarian end and an English end, since I was living very much between the two countries at the time,” Szalay said in an interview when his book was first longlisted. He added, “Writing about a Hungarian immigrant at the time when Hungary joined the EU seemed like an obvious way to go. So it would be, to some extent, a novel about contemporary Europe, and about the cultural and economic divides that characterise it.”
A Unique Literary Achievement
The judging panel praised “Flesh” as a unique and powerful work. The panel included Irish writer and former Booker prize winner Roddy Doyle, “Sex and the City” star Sarah Jessica Parker, and Nigerian author Ayobami Adebayo. They described the novel as “a meditation on class, power, intimacy, migration and masculinity, [and] a compelling portrait of one man, and the formative experiences that can reverberate across a lifetime.”
“We had never read anything quite like it. It is, in many ways, a dark book but it is a joy to read,” Roddy Doyle, who chaired the panel, said in the statement. He continued, “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.”
Background and Previous Recognition
David Szalay was born in Canada, raised in the United Kingdom, and currently lives in Vienna, Austria. “Flesh” is his sixth work of fiction. He had previously been shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2016 for his novel “All That Man Is,” which is a series of stories about nine wildly different men.
This year’s other finalists included Andrew Miller’s “The Land in Winter,” Kiran Desai’s “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny,” Susan Choi’s “Flashlight,” Katie Kitamura’s “Audition,” and “The Rest of Our Lives” by Ben Markovits.
International Booker Prize Winner
In addition to the Booker Prize, the sister award, the International Booker Prize, was also announced this year. This prize is awarded to a book translated into English. In 2025, it was won by Indian author Banu Mushtaq for her novel “Heart Lamp.”