From Booker shortlisted author David Szalay, comes a propulsive, hypnotic novel, about a man who is unravelled by a series of events beyond his grasp
Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour - a married woman close to his mother's age - as his only companion. These encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that István himself can barely understand, and his life soon spirals out of control.
As the years pass, he is carried gradually upwards on the currents of the twenty-first century's tides of money and power, moving from the army to the company of London's super-rich, with his own competing impulses for love, intimacy, status and wealth winning him unimaginable riches, until they threaten to undo him completely.
Spare and penetrating, Flesh is the finest novel yet by a master of realism, asking profound questions about what drives a life: what makes it worth living, and what breaks it.
**WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025**
'Brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money' David Nicholls
'Anyone can pick up Flesh and appreciate it' Jennette McCurdy
'Brilliance on every page' Samantha Harvey
'So much searing insight into the way we live now' Observer
Through chance, luck and choice, one man's life takes him from a modest apartment in Hungary to the elite society of London - in this captivating new novel about the forces that make and break our lives
Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he becomes isolated, with his neighbour - a married woman - as his only companion. When a clandestine relationship begins between them, his life spirals out of control.
As the years pass, István moves from the army to the circles of London's elite. His competing impulses for love, intimacy, status and wealth win him unimaginable riches, until they threaten to undo him completely.
'An astonishingly moving portrait of a man's life' Booker Prize Judges, 2025
'A revelatory novel' Sunday Times
'Pure brilliance from the first to the (devastating) last sentence' India Knight
'Refreshing, illuminating and true' Financial Times
'One of the most astonishing books I've ever read' Dua Lipa
'Hugely entertaining, gripping like a thriller' The Times
'Visceral and compelling' Gary Stevenson
'Exciting, propulsive, emotional' Sarah Jessica Parker
*A BOOK OF THE YEAR for the Guardian, Observer, Financial Times, Sunday Times, Independent, GQ and Daily Telegraph*
