David Szalay’s novel, Flesh, was named the winner of the Booker Prize 2025 Monday, November 10, at a ceremony held at Old Billingsgate in London, according to a statement.
Szalay receives the £50,000 prize and a trophy, presented to him by last year’s winner, Samantha Harvey.
Szalay, who was previously shortlisted for All That Man Is in 2016, is the first Hungarian-British author to win the Booker Prize. Born in Canada, Szalay has lived in Lebanon, the UK, Hungary, and now Vienna, and previously worked in financial advertising sales in the City of London before starting his writing career.
Speaking about the inspiration for his sixth work of fiction, Szalay said, “I wanted to write about life as a physical experience, about what it’s like to be a living body in the world”. He also revealed that he “wanted to write a book with a Hungarian end and an English end” to reflect contemporary Europe and the cultural and economic divides within it.
The 2025 judging panel, chaired by critically acclaimed writer and 1993 Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle, selected Flesh from 153 books considered. The panel also included novelist Ayobámi Adébáyò, actor and publisher Sarah Jessica Parker, critic Chris Power, and author Kiley Reid.
Roddy Doyle praised the winning novel, calling it an “extraordinary, singular novel” and “a dark book that is a joy to read”. The judges deliberated for over five hours, returning to Flesh repeatedly because of its unique nature.
Doyle highlighted the spare prose and the way the novel uses white space on the page to allow the reader to “observe – almost to create the character with him”. He explained that the protagonist, István, is known not through his words but through absence and subtle detail, such as knowing he grieves because “for several pages, there are no words at all”.
Flesh is a propulsive novel that spans decades, charting the life of István as he rises from a housing estate in Hungary to the mansions of London’s super-rich. The novel is described as a meditation on class, power, intimacy, migration, and masculinity. It follows István from a clandestine relationship with a married neighbour at age 15 to his adult life, where his impulses for love, status, and wealth lead to unimaginable riches but threaten to undo him completely.
The ceremony was broadcast live as a special episode of BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, hosted by Samira Ahmed, and was also livestreamed on the Booker Prizes’ YouTube and Instagram channels. The star-studded event was attended by authors like Zadie Smith and Bernardine Evaristo, and actors including Sarah Jessica Parker, Adjoa Andoh, and Jason Isaacs. An extract from Flesh was performed by multi-award-winning musician Stormzy for the Booker Prize 2025 shortlist films and screened at the ceremony.
The Booker Prize Foundation’s Chief Executive, Gaby Wood, added that the judges “found it spare, disciplined, urgent, honest and heartbreaking” and agreed that Szalay “breaks new ground” with Flesh.
