Flesh

By: David Szalay

Narrated by: Daniel Weyman

Brought to you by Penguin.

**WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025**

A propulsive, hypnotic novel about a man who is unravelled by a series of events beyond his grasp.

Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour – a married woman close to his mother’s age – as his only companion. These encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that István himself can barely understand, and his life soon spirals out of control.

As the years pass, he is carried gradually upwards on the currents of the twenty-first century’s tides of money and power, moving from the army to the company of London’s super-rich, with his own competing impulses for love, intimacy, status and wealth winning him unimaginable riches, until they threaten to undo him completely.

Spare and penetrating, Flesh is the finest novel yet by a master of realism, asking profound questions about what drives a life: what makes it worth living, and what breaks it.

Chosen as a ‘Best Book of 2025’ by the Guardian, Observer, Financial Times, Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail

'Brilliance on every page' Samantha Harvey, author of Orbital

‘Flesh is a wonderful novel – so brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money' David Nicholls, author of One Day

'It’s been a long time since I’ve been swallowed whole by a novel the way I was by this one ... So much searing insight into the way we live now' Observer

'Compelling and elegant, merciless and poignant. David Szalay is an extraordinary writer' Tessa Hadley

© David Szalay 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Critic reviews

Flesh is at once intricate and spacious, it flows both fast and deep. There's brilliance on every page. Szalay is an ingenious conductor of time, and of the fates and forces that give shape to a life (Samantha Harvey, author of Orbital)

Flesh is a wonderful novel – so brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money (David Nicholls)

A superb novel, written with great terse authority and allure: mordant, knowing and disturbingly wise (William Boyd)

This is a marvellous novel. Compelling and elegant, merciless and poignant. David Szalay is an extraordinary writer (Tessa Hadley)

I hope David Szalay wins the Booker this year... Flesh is a masterpiece, told with virtuosic economy... Pure brilliance from the first to the (devastating) last sentence (India Knight)

Refreshing, illuminating and true… a moving work of art with a plot that compels and surprises and devastates (Financial Times)

[A] compulsive look at wealth and power, love and sex… Szalay has that rare ability to convey entire galaxies in the sparest writing

Flesh…has ensnared me… It’s rare to find prose this spare that doesn’t feel affect, but Szalay handles surface and depth with skill, as only great novelists can. Flesh is a revelatory novel

Hypnotically tense and compelling… An astonishingly moving portrait of a man’s life (Booker Judges, 2025)

In István David Szalay has created a modern existential antihero in the grand tradition of Camus and Dostoevsky. Amid the random accidents and desultory decisions that shape his life, and come to feel like fate, he is at once a cool observer and a towering presence. Taut, spare and perfectly structured, Flesh reads like a gripping thriller which slowly gathers to itself the emotional power of classical tragedy (Carys Davies, author of Clear)

The Voice Actor Was Incredible!

The voice actor made the whole book much much easier to enjoy. Great work of literary art as well. Well deserved booker prize.

It was ok…. lol

This books not for everyone. But it was beautifully written , I enjoyed it highly recommend.

Different

I liked the writing and story. The protagonist is not necessarily a nice person yet I wanted to know more about the man.

a pedestrian grind

Ugh! Slow and simple - struggling to understand why this book did as well as it did. Far from complex, slightly unbelievable and frustratingly simple. Perhaps yes- that puts you in the protagonist’s headspace so clever literarily but oeff it was hard

What was not said

Interesting. Very paired back style. Not sure if I will listen to or read another book by this author. Probably not.