David Szalay wins 2025 Booker Prize for Fiction for his novel ‘Flesh’

London: Canadian-Hungarian- British author David Szalay has won the Booker Prize for Fiction 2025 for his novel Flesh, a deeply introspective exploration of an ordinary man’s life marked by longing, resilience, and the quiet strangeness of existence.

The 51-year-old writer triumphed over five other shortlisted finalists, including strong contenders Andrew Miller and Kiran Desai, to claim the prestigious literary honour, which carries a £50,000 (USD 66,000) cash award and a major boost in global recognition and book sales.

Chosen from a pool of 153 submitted novels, ‘Flesh’ captivated the judging panel, chaired by Irish novelist Roddy Doyle and featuring “Sex and the City” star Sarah Jessica Parker, for its subtle power and emotional depth.

Doyle described Flesh as “a book about living and the strangeness of living”, revealing that Szalay’s work was the judges’ unanimous choice after a five-hour deliberation.

The novel follows István, a quiet Hungarian man whose life unfolds from a youthful affair with an older woman to his years as an immigrant in Britain and eventual entry into London’s high society. Through his journey, Szalay delves into themes of identity, class, and the physical reality of being alive.

The author has said he wanted to write about a Hungarian immigrant and “about life as a physical experience, about what it's like to be a living body in the world.” Doyle, who chaired the judges, said István belongs to a group overlooked in fiction: a working-class man. He said that since reading it, he looks more closely when he walks past bouncers standing in the doorways of Dublin pubs.