British-Hungarian writer David Szalay has been awarded the Booker Prize for fiction for his novel "Flesh," a tortured story of a Hungarian emigre who makes and loses a fortune.
The 51-year-old writer beat five other finalists to take the high-profile annual literary award, which honors the best English-language novel published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. It comes with a 50,000-pound (USD 66,000, Euro 57,000) prize and a big boost to the winner's sales and profile.
Written in sparse prose, "Flesh" follows the life of a working class and taciturn Hungarian man over decades. It charts his teenage relationship with an older woman to his time as a struggling immigrant in Britain to working for the ultra-wealthy in London.
"I wanted to write a book with a Hungarian end and an English end, since I was living very much between the two countries at the time," Szalay said in an interview with the Booker Prize when his book was first longlisted.
"Writing about a Hungarian immigrant at the time when Hungary joined the EU seemed like an obvious way to go. So it would be, to some extent, a novel about contemporary Europe, and about the cultural and economic divides that characterise it," he said.
'Never read anything quite like it' — judging panel
The judging panel included Irish writer and former Booker prize winner Roddy Doyle, "Sex and the City" star Sarah Jessica Parker and Nigerian author Ayobami Adebayo.
"A meditation on class, power, intimacy, migration and masculinity, Flesh is a compelling portrait of one man, and the formative experiences that can reverberate across a lifetime," the panel said in a statement.
"We had never read anything quite like it. It is, in many ways, a dark book but it is a joy to read," Roddy Doyle, who chaired the panel, said in the statement.
"I don't think I've read a novel that uses the white space on the page so well. It's as if the author, David Szalay, is inviting the reader to fill the space, to observe — almost to create — the character with him."
Szalay was born in Canada, raised in the United Kingdom and lives in the Austrian capital, Vienna.
The novel was his author's sixth work of fiction. He had previously been shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2016 for his last work "All That Man Is," a series of stories about nine wildly different men.
This year's other finalists were Andrew Miller's "The Land in Winter," Kiran Desai's "The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny," Susan Choi's "Flashlight," Katie Kitamura's "Audition" and "The Rest of Our Lives" by Ben Markovits.
A sister award, the International Booker Prize which is awarded to a book translated into English, was won in 2025 by Indian author Banu Mushtaq for "Heart Lamp."
Earlier, British author Andrew Miller and Indian novelist Kiran Desai are the bookmakers’ favorites to win this year’s prestigious Booker Prize for fiction, with the award ceremony scheduled in London on Monday.
Both writers are among six finalists vying for the coveted literary prize, which carries a GBP 50,000 (USD 66,000) reward and often gives a significant boost to book sales and author recognition. This year’s winner was chosen from 153 submitted novels by a judging panel that includes Irish writer Roddy Doyle and actress Sarah Jessica Parker.
