David Szalay wins 2025 Booker Prize for ‘Flesh’; Kiran Desai misses second crown

London: Hungarian-British author David Szalay has been awarded the 2025 Booker Prize for his novel ‘Flesh’, triumphing over Indian writer Kiran Desai and her much-anticipated work ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’ at a ceremony in London on Monday night.

Szalay, aged 51, received the £50,000 prize and a trophy from last year’s winner, Samantha Harvey, during the event held at Old Billingsgate. His winning novel was praised by the judges as “hypnotically tense and compelling”, offering “an astonishingly moving portrait of a man’s life” told through “the sparest of prose”.

‘Flesh’ centres on an emotionally detached man whose life begins to unravel through a chain of events beyond his control. Speaking on behalf of the judging panel, Roddy Doyle, the Irish novelist who chaired this year’s jury, said, “What we particularly liked about ‘Flesh’ was its singularity. It’s just not like any other book. It’s a dark book, but we all found it a joy to read.”

Desai, who won the Booker in 2006 for ‘The Inheritance of Loss’, narrowly missed the chance to become only the fifth double winner in the prize’s 56-year history. Her new 667-page novel, ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’, was described by the judges as “an epic of love and family, India and America, tradition and modernity”.

Desai has described the book as an exploration of “global loneliness through the lens of a long, unresolved love story”. She added, “A love story in today’s globalised world would likely wander in so many different directions.”

Despite its breadth and ambition, ‘Flesh’ ultimately won over the panel, which also considered works by Susan Choi (‘Flashlight’), Katie Kitamura (‘Audition’), Ben Markovits (‘The Rest of Our Lives’), and Andrew Miller (‘The Land in Winter’). Each of the six shortlisted authors will receive £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book.

Reflecting on the shortlist as a whole, Doyle said the novels shared two defining qualities.

“Their authors are in total command of their own store of English, their own rhythm, their own expertise; they have each crafted a novel that no one else could have written.

And all of the books, in six different and very fresh ways, find their stories in the examination of the individual trying to live with — to love, to seek attention from, to cope with, to understand, to keep at bay, or escape from — other people. In other words, they are all brilliantly written and they are all brilliantly human.”

This year’s panel also included Ayòbámi Adébáyò, Sarah Jessica Parker, Chris Power, and Kiley Reid.

With ‘Flesh’, Szalay cements his reputation as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary fiction and as the latest author to join the ranks of Booker Prize winners whose work captures the complex solitude of modern life.

PTI