Flesh (Unabridged)
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3.8 • 46 Ratings
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE 2025 BOOKER PRIZE AND A NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Finalist for the Kirkus Prize | Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence
From “the shrewdest writer on contemporary masculinity we have” (Esquire), a “captivating...hypnotic...virtuosic” (The Baffler) novel about a man whose life veers off course due to a series of unforeseen circumstances.
Teenaged István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and is soon isolated, drawn instead into a series of events that leave him forever a stranger to peers, his mother, and himself. In the years that follow, István is born along by the goodwill, or self-interest, of strangers, charting a rocky yet upward trajectory that lands him further from his childhood, and the defining events that abruptly ended it, than he could possibly have imagined.
A collection of intimate moments over the course of decades, Flesh chronicles a man at odds with himself—estranged from and by the circumstances and demands of a life not entirely under his control and the roles that he is asked to play. Shadowed by the specter of past tragedy and the apathy of modernity, the tension between István and all that alienates him hurtles forward until sudden tragedy again throws life as he knows it in jeopardy.
“Spare and detached on the page, lush in resonance beyond it” (NPR), Flesh traces the imperceptible but indelible contours of unresolved trauma and its aftermath amid the precarity and violence of an ever-globalizing Europe with incisive insight, unyielding pathos, and startling humanity.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
David Szalay examines the unvarnished realities of unprocessed trauma in this stark and brilliantly observed character study. István is a 15-year-old boy living in Hungary when a trusted neighbor begins sexually abusing him. After a confrontation with the woman’s husband ends tragically, István’s life takes a hard turn, forever hobbled by these deeply wounding events. From stints in juvenile detention and the military to experiments with sex and drugs to an unlikely career driving London’s wealthy elite, his lack of agency and introspection remains constant. Emotionally stunted, István drifts passively through his own life, and Szalay captures that utter detachment with sparse prose and piercing restraint. Daniel Weyman’s measured narration mirrors that hollowness to moving effect, drawing us into the quiet devastation behind István’s performatively stoic façade.
Customer Reviews
Lonely and unique
The audio perfectly complimented this book. The story is well told and intriguing. Hope this book wins the Booker 😀
Slow, one-dimensional, unimaginative
Quite literally the worst book ive read. I want my money back. Slow, poor dialogue, unnecessarily crass. Every character is apathetic, one-dimensional and stunted. No one has any feelings. No one has any interests. It was like a 13 year old boy wrote this as a first draft.
Dull
This book’s Apple review is polite and aspirational. I found the book to be very slow, lacking any significant movement, and I’ve never read dialogue that was filled with “yeah “okay” as much as in this book. Very disappointed that this book won the Booker.