The Architecture of Ambition: David Szalay’s Booker Win with Flesh
The announcement of David Szalay as the winner of the 2025 Booker Prize for his novel, Flesh, was more than the handing over of an award; it is the validation for one of contemporary literature’s most distinctive and ambitious aesthetic projects.
Szalay has long been recognised as an innovative stylist. His earliest work, his debut London and the South-East, secured the Betty Trask Award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, immediately establishing him as a writer of quality. This initial success was backed by his inclusion in Granta’s “Best of Young British Novelists” list in 2013 and recognition by The Telegraph as one of the top British writers under 40. The precursor to the 2025 win was the shortlisting of his fourth novel, All That Man Is, for the Booker Prize in 2016 — a work that also won the Gordon Burn Prize and the Plimpton Prize for Fiction. Szalay has said that the shortlisting ‘transformed my career’ and yielded a significant boost to his book sales. As the first Hungarian-British author to receive the honour, his work gains praise for its nuanced exploration of bicultural identity and the shifting geopolitical landscape of modern Europe.
The Booker Prize judging panel, chaired by the novelist Roddy Doyle and including the actor and publisher Sarah Jessica Parker, arrived at their selection of Flesh after ‘more than five hours’ of intense deliberation, ultimately reaching a unanimous decision. The core of their rationale rested on the book’s perceived ‘singularity’ and its formal courage in challenging traditional novelistic convention.
Roddy Doyle repeatedly emphasised that he and the other judges had never read anything quite like it, underscoring the novel’s status as a stylistic outlier among the shortlist. Szalay, in his acceptance speech, acknowledged this point, thanking the panel for rewarding his ‘risky’ novel, which he admitted emerged from a desire to ‘write about life as a physical experience, about what it’s like to be a living body in the world.’
The official Booker Prize citation described Flesh as a ‘disquisition on the art of being alive, and all the affliction that comes along with it.’ This statement neatly captures the novel’s engagement with profound existential concerns, addressing ‘the biggest metaphysical questions about identity, free will and the purpose of life.’
A decisive factor in the judges’ unanimous choice was Szalay’s highly controlled, minimalist aesthetic. The prose is spare, favouring short sentences and an unadorned, factual style. Doyle observed that the writing maximises impact by ensuring that ‘Every word matters; the spaces between the words matter,’ specifically praising Szalay’s effective use of white space on the page. This commitment to compression elevates the material, turning what might in other hands be a simple narrative into a work of immense subtlety and suggestiveness.
The Radical Exteriority of the Protagonist
The structural brilliance of Flesh lies in its radical exteriority — the deliberate act of ‘scooping out the interiority’ that typically defines literary character studies. The novel follows István, its taciturn protagonist, tracing his life from a working-class childhood in a Hungarian backwater, via military service in Kuwait, to his eventual ascent into the wealthy London elite. Throughout this epic journey, the narrative consciously denies the reader access to István’s thoughts, emotions and motivations. We observe only his actions, and the reactions of others to him — how they desire him, fear him, or judge him. The character’s emotional detachment is perfectly mirrored in his dialogue, with his most frequent response often being nothing more than a bland, noncommittal ‘OK.’
This formal choice — the leaving of ‘yawning gaps in the text’ — was hailed by the judges as the novel’s greatest strength. Doyle asserted that if those narrative gaps were filled, it would be less of a book. The decision to confer the Booker on a novel that consciously eschews psychological depth signals a significant institutional endorsement of formal innovation and minimalism as potent tools for addressing contemporary experience. By focusing on István’s movements through the world rather than his inner life, Szalay transforms the individual study into a broader meditation on fate and the buffeting winds of global capital and meaningless tragedy. The judges noted that the plot’s ‘tremendous pace’ further sustains István’s detachment, speaking to the major theme of ‘the detachment of our bodies from our decisions.’
Beyond form, the judges were deeply impressed by the novel’s thematic engagement with class and contemporary masculinity. Roddy Doyle highlighted that István represents a group, specifically a working-class man, who ‘ordinarily doesn’t get much of a look in’ in serious literary fiction. The novel’s depiction of masculinity replaces the ‘swagger and snigger of Amis-era literary machismo’ with a scrupulous, almost forensic, matter-of-factness.
The portrayal of István as a man who struggles profoundly to express emotion resonated as ‘real and powerful’ to the judges. This focus confirms Szalay’s position as a vital voice interpreting modern European masculinity, migration, and the impact of social mobility on the individual. Doyle confessed that after reading the book, he began to look more closely at bouncers standing in the doorways of Dublin pubs, feeling that he might ‘know him a bit better’ — a testament to the novel’s capacity to invite the reader to ‘look behind the face’ of an often-overlooked demographic.
The immediate economic impact of the Booker Prize is often quantified as the ‘Booker Effect’ — a guaranteed, seismic shift in market status that generates global visibility and dramatically expands the commercial life of the winner’s work. For David Szalay, the 2025 win translates into instant financial security and a profound expansion of his readership.
First, the financial injection: Szalay received the £50,000 prize itself. While substantial, this immediate capital primarily affords necessary professional latitude, helping with ‘general expenses’ and ‘keeping the wolf a bit further from the door.’ The true economic transformation, however, lies in the colossal commercial momentum generated by the award.
In anticipation of soaring public demand, Szalay’s publisher, Jonathan Cape, immediately commissioned a massive reprint of 150,000 copies of Flesh the day following the announcement. This figure is a clear measure of the expected ‘Booker Effect.’ To put this in context, the previous year’s winner saw total all-time sales exceed 760,000 copies, representing an increase of 3,700 per cent on its pre-longlist sales figures — a staggering commercial leap that Szalay’s work is now projected to emulate.
Perhaps the most profound marker of the prize’s impact on Szalay’s long-term career is the exponential growth in global market penetration. While Szalay’s work was already translated into over twenty languages before 2025, the prize fundamentally transformed Flesh into a high-demand global commodity.
Translation rights deals for the novel escalated dramatically, rising from just eight territories before the book’s longlisting to a current total of 45 territories. This significant increase in global licensing agreements ensures assured, sustained royalty income across dozens of international markets, validating the book’s universal relevance. The Booker Prize acts as the ultimate de-risking mechanism for foreign publishers, establishing Szalay’s work as a permanent fixture in global literary output and securing an expansive, truly international readership for the rest of his career.
Szalay’s unique trajectory, encompassing both the 2016 shortlisting and the 2025 win, offers a rare comparative measure of Booker recognition. While the shortlist ‘transformed’ his career and established him as a viable commercial entity, the win provides ‘instant international recognition’ and a career ‘transformed overnight’ into one of canonical, generational significance. The financial award alone increased twentyfold, but the real prize is the market authority to command a global audience and secure long-term creative freedom.
The distinction of being a Booker Prize winner comes with a unique set of professional constraints. The extensive demands of the accompanying publicity duties immediately impose a new rhythm on the author’s life. Szalay has noted that the experience was ‘very intense’ and ‘overwhelming,’ requiring significant engagement with the public, including high-profile interviews and literary partnerships, such as those with Dua Lipa’s Service95 Book Club.
This immediate shift in professional priorities has already had a measurable impact on his creative schedule. Szalay confirmed that his next novel, a work he has been developing for approximately a year, will likely face a publication delay. Previously aiming for a 2027 release, the extensive publicity commitments — part of the necessary labour of being a Laureate — have pushed the anticipated publication date to ‘more likely to be 2028.’ This delay highlights the complex reality of the award: the financial freedom required for creative sustenance comes at the cost of immediate seclusion and reduced production time.
Despite the professional interruption, the prize provides an essential gift: substantial creative authority. Szalay’s characteristic approach often involves fragmented, linked narratives — a structure previously seen in his shortlisted novel, All That Man Is. His next work is confirmed to follow a similar pattern, possessing ‘several parts that are sort of somewhat independent of each other’ and set across ‘various European countries.’ The judges’ decision to award the prize to Flesh — a novel lauded for its formal innovation and commitment to its stylistic risk — offers powerful institutional validation for Szalay to continue to ‘play with the form a little bit.’ This affirmation ensures that he can maintain his dedication to compressed, austere storytelling, a style that reviewers have long celebrated as subtle and masterful.
The win also consolidates Szalay’s thematic territory. His sustained interest in masculinity, migration, repression, and the complex geography of contemporary Europe is now irrevocably recognised as vital to contemporary literary discourse. The explicit praise from the chair of the judges for focusing on a working-class male protagonist guarantees significant cultural weight and scholarly interest for future projects that continue to explore these existential themes. Furthermore, his status as the first Hungarian-British winner cements his crucial role as an interpreter of the bicultural experience, tying him historically to other celebrated authors of Hungarian descent in the literary landscape.
The Original Writers Group 