The winner of the Booker Prize 2025 has been announced, and the British-Hungarian author David Szalay has won the prize for fiction for his novel “Flesh”. It is a tale of a Hungarian immigrant who makes and loses a fortune in Britain. The shortlist featured five other authors. The prize is not just about literary recognition but also a financial boost to the author with the prize money of 50,000 pounds.
Talking about his novel, Szalay said, “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. 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.”
The novel follows the life of Istvan, a Hungarian man whose life unfolds through decades, from the cruel environments of childhood endured in the socialist flats to the luxury of the London elite. It is a story that paints a horrible picture of class, homelessness, and manhood. There are no grand speeches or monologues in the story, just the quiet ache of a life observed with devastating clarity. Roddy Doyle described Flesh as “a dark book that is nonetheless a joy to read”. Every word in the story feels measured and deliberate as if Szalay is craving meaning out of the silence. It is a novel that requires its readers to read between the lines and see what is not said.
The judging panel consists of Irish writer and former Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle, actress Sarah Jessica Parker, and Nigerian author Ayobami Adebayo. The panel statement said, “A meditation on class, power, intimacy, migration, and masculinity, Flesh is a compelling portrait of one man and the formative experiences that can reverberate across a lifetime.”
Flesh is the most fitting winner of the Booker Prize 2025; it is a novel that combines intellectual precision with emotional depth. David Szalay’s achievement lies in distilling the vastness of human experience into fragile life. His win reminds us that literature endures not through spectacle, but through empathy.
Grab your copy of the winner from BooksWagon UAE and Online bookstore and know why and what the Flesh stood out in the queue of five other shortlists.
