David Szalay wins Booker Prize
Canadian-born Hungarian-British author David Szalay has been named the winner of the prestigious Booker Prize for his novel, Flesh.
12 Nov 2025 | 266 Views | By Jiya Somaiya
On 10 November, during a ceremony in London, 51-year-old David Szalay was presented with the 2025 Booker Prize and the GBP 50,000 prize money by last year’s recipient, Samantha Harvey.
Flesh, Szalay’s sixth novel, was chosen by a five-person judging panel following a five-hour meeting, ultimately emerging as the unanimous selection. The 2025 judging panel was chaired by 1993 Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle, the first Booker Prize winner to chair a Booker judging panel. Doyle was joined by Ayobami Adebayo, Sarah Jessica Parker, Chris Power, and Kiley Reid.
Flesh traces the life of the emotionally reserved Hungarian immigrant Istvan, from a secretive teenage relationship in Hungary to navigating the upper echelons of London high society. The author has stated his intention was to write about the Hungarian immigrant experience and “about life as a physical experience, about what it is like to be a living body in the world.”
Doyle, chair of judges, said, “At the end of the novel, we don’t know what the protagonist, Istvan, looks like, but this never feels like a lack; quite the opposite. Somehow, it’s the absence of words – or the absence of Istvan’s words – that allows us to know Istvan. Early in the book, we know that he cries because the person he’s with tells him not to; later in life, we know he’s balding because he envies another man’s hair; we know he grieves because, for several pages, there are no words at all.”
He added, “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. The writing is spare, and that is its great strength. Every word matters; the spaces between the words matter. The book is about living, and the strangeness of living, and, as we read, as we turn the pages, we’re glad we’re alive and reading – experiencing – this extraordinary, singular novel.”
Szalay was born in Canada, was raised in the UK and currently resides in Vienna. He had previously been a Booker finalist in 2016 for his work All That Man Is.
The Booker Prize, founded in 1969, is awarded annually to the best sustained work of fiction written in English and published in the UK or Ireland.