Flesh

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.


**WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025**

Through chance, luck and choice, one man’s life takes him from a modest apartment in Hungary to the elite society of London – in this captivating new novel about the forces that make and break our lives

Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he becomes isolated, with his neighbour – a married woman – as his only companion. When a clandestine relationship begins between them, his life spirals out of control.

As the years pass, István moves from the army to the circles of London’s elite. His competing impulses for love, intimacy, status and wealth win him unimaginable riches, until they threaten to undo him completely.

‘Brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money’ David Nicholls

‘One of the most astonishing books I’ve ever read’ Dua Lipa

’So much searing insight into the way we live now’ Observer

‘I was tearing through Flesh, I never once slowed down’ Jennette McCurdy

‘Brilliance on every page’ Samantha Harvey

‘Hugely entertaining, gripping like a thriller’ The Times

© David Szalay 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Critics Review

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
i
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
Sunday Times
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

User Reviews

Book 4.8
Narration 5.0
4.0
5.0
Although it feels emotionless and hollow, with little or no character development, it certainly is a gripping and unique story of one man's life. Undoubtedly, well-written with a dialogue delivery unlike any other book.
AgiBob 01/03/2026
5.0
5.0
Really enjoyed this book about a man going throughout life completely detached of his emotions and acting purely on impulse and bodily drive.
Rozza 12/01/2026
5.0
5.0
Bom livro!
ALJT 24/11/2025
5.0
5.0
jenread 17/11/2025
5.0
5.0
ADW320 26/10/2025

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