Booker Prize won by ‘extraordinary’ Flesh by David Szalay
British-Hungarian author David Szalay has won this year’s Booker Prize for his novel Flesh, which the judges described as “extraordinary” and “a very special book”.
Flesh tells the story of an alluring, enigmatic and emotionally detached man who is swept through different phases of his life, from a Hungarian housing estate to the world of the ultra-rich in London.
“What we particularly liked about Flesh was its singularity. It’s just not like any other book,” said author Roddy Doyle, who chaired the judging panel. “It’s a dark book, but we all found it a joy to read.”
Actress Sarah Jessica Parker was among the other Booker judges, while Flesh has been championed by Dua Lipa and Stormzy.
Szalay told the BBC he was feeling a “bit dazed” after winning the prize and it was going to take a while to “sink in”.
“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,” he said.
“But it’s fantastic, of course.”
Stormzy recorded an extract of the book for a short film that was played at the Booker Prize ceremony in London on Monday.
And Dua Lipa described it as a “tense and gripping read” when she picked it for her book club last month.
Flesh has had rave reviews across the board.
The Guardian called it a “brilliantly spare portrait of a man” and a “thrilling exploration of what it means to be alive”, while the Sunday Times praised how Szalay uses “just one character, Istvan, to tell these three stages of modern man”.
Blank pages
Critics and judges have also praised Szalay’s pared-down, minimalist dialogue and descriptions.
“We loved the spareness of the writing,” Doyle explained. “We loved how so much is revealed without us being overly aware of it being revealed.
“It’s just extraordinary how he uses white space. Grief is depicted by a few blank pages.”
Referring to the writing style, Doyle added: “I found it riveting, and I thought the dialogue was superb – and the absence of it was superb.”
Booker organisers described Flesh as “a meditation on class, power, intimacy, migration and masculinity”, and called it “a compelling portrait of one man, and the formative experiences that can reverberate across a lifetime”.
‘Honest and heartbreaking’
The judges spent more than five hours discussing the six shortlisted novels before settling on the winner. Doyle said it became “very clear that this was the book that all five of us liked most”.
“They found it spare, disciplined, urgent, honest and heartbreaking,” said Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation.
“With Flesh, they all agreed, David Szalay breaks new ground. I share the judges’ excitement over the work of an author who has been writing with ferocious and stark commitment for many years.”
Flesh is Szalay’s sixth novel, and he was previously nominated for the Booker for All That Man Is, another exploration of modern masculinity, in 2016.
He collected £50,000 as this year’s winner.
The other shortlisted novels were:
The Booker Prize is the UK’s most prestigious fiction award and is open to novels written in the English language.
Past winners include Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Bernardine Evaristo, Hilary Mantel and Douglas Stuart.
