Hungarian British author David Szalay has won the prestigious Booker Prize, worth 50,000 British pounds ($101,000), for his dark but strangely humorous book Flesh.
The novel charts the life of taciturn loner István, living in a housing estate in Hungary. His life is shaped by the affair he has as a teenager with his middle-aged neighbour.
2025 Booker Prize shortlist Flashlight by Susan Choi
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Audition by Katie Kitamura
The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits
The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller
Flesh by David Szalay
Jumping forward in time each chapter, Flesh takes István from his small home town to the Middle East, where he waits for a flight home after serving in the Iraq War.
He later moves to England, where a job in security leads him to fraternise with the ultra-wealthy. There, he begins to repeat the disruptive patterns of his youth, experiencing riches, and grief, he's never known before.
First shortlisted for the Booker in 2016 for a collection of linked stories, All That
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