British-Hungarian author David Szalay has been awarded the prestigious 2025 Booker Prize for his novel Flesh, earning £50,000 ($66,000, €57,000) and international acclaim. The announcement was made at a ceremony in London on November 10, 2025.
Flesh tells the haunting story of a Hungarian émigré whose life spans decades of struggle, ambition, and loss. From a teenage romance with an older woman to the challenges of immigrant life in Britain, and eventually working for London’s ultra-wealthy, the novel explores class, migration, masculinity, and the social divides that define contemporary Europe, reports dw.com
Szalay, 51, said of his work: “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. Writing about a Hungarian immigrant at the time Hungary joined the EU seemed like an obvious way to go.”
The judging panel, including Irish writer and former Booker winner Roddy Doyle, “Sex and the City” star Sarah Jessica Parker, and Nigerian author Ayobami Adebayo, praised Flesh as “a meditation on class, power, intimacy, migration, and masculinity… 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 highlighted Szalay’s striking use of white space in the novel, calling it “as if the author is inviting the reader to fill the space, to observe — almost to create — the character with him.”
Born in Canada, raised in the UK, and now living in Vienna, Szalay won the Booker after previously being shortlisted in 2016 for All That Man Is, a collection of interconnected stories about nine very different men.
The other finalists this year included 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 Ben Markovits’ The Rest of Our Lives.
Meanwhile, the 2025 International Booker Prize, awarded to a work translated into English, was claimed by Indian author Banu Mushtaq for Heart Lamp.
Szalay’s win underscores his growing reputation as one of contemporary literature’s most compelling voices, blending European history, migration, and intimate human experience into a deeply affecting narrative.
