Flesh
A Novel (Booker Prize Winner)
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4.0 • 330 Ratings
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- $14.99
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Szalay (Turbulence) offers a heartbreaking and revelatory portrait of a taciturn Hungarian man who serially attempts to build a new life after his traumatic adolescence. At 15, István struggles with adjusting to a new town in Hungary. After a married neighbor coerces him into sex, they regularly see each other until they're caught by her husband, whom István accidentally kills by knocking him down the stairs. He's sent to juvenile detention. Once out, he joins the army and fights in the Iraq War, where a good friend dies in an ambush and he feels responsible. István then tries to start over in London, finding work first as a bouncer at a strip club, then as a driver and security guard for a wealthy family. As the gritty narrative unfolds, István presents himself as little more than a hunk of flesh, preyed upon by married women who are hungry for something missing from their own lives. The propulsive narrative is heavy on dialogue, in which István regularly responds with a simple "okay" to questions about how he's doing, though Szalay makes clear that István is far from okay. Near the end, István is forced to make a difficult moral choice, and the outcome starkly reveals the degree to which his life is shaped by fate. This tragedy will leave readers in awe.
Customer Reviews
Read it
Dry, linear, strong and delicate
Best book I read in a long time
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It tells about love, parenting, and solitude. I like the voice of the author. A novel masterly told.
Nothing learned
I can’t recommend this book to anyone in good conscience.