London: British-Hungarian writer David Szalay has won the 2025 Booker Prize for his novel Flesh, a minimalist yet deeply resonant exploration of a man’s life and solitude.
Szalay’s sixth book was chosen unanimously after an intense six-hour deliberation, according to Irish novelist Roddy Doyle, who chaired this year’s judging panel. He said the panel was drawn to the novel’s originality and power, describing it as unlike anything they had read before. The award was presented to Szalay, 51, by last year’s winner Samantha Harvey at a ceremony held at London’s Old Billingsgate.
Accepting the prize, Szalay reflected on the creative risks behind the novel. He said fiction has a unique capacity to push boundaries– aesthetic, formal, and even moral, and that this freedom is what makes the form vital.
Published in March, Flesh follows the life of István, a quiet and often inscrutable Hungarian man, from boyhood to old age. Its spare prose and emotional restraint have been widely praised.
Doyle said the book’s use of silence and space was striking, praising Szalay’s control and emotional precision. Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, called it “spare, disciplined, urgent, honest and heartbreaking.”
This year’s shortlist featured established writers, with no debut authors in contention. Alongside Szalay were Kiran Desai for The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, Ben Markovits for The Rest of Our Lives, Susan Choi for Flashlight, Andrew Miller for The Land in Winter, and Katie Kitamura for Audition.
Szalay, who lives in Vienna, is known for his sharp insight into modern masculinity. His 2016 work All That Man Is was previously shortlisted for the Booker, and Flesh continues his exploration of identity, aging, and male vulnerability.
Speaking earlier this year, Szalay said his fiction, though written from a male point of view, speaks to human experience rather than gender alone. Doyle said the judges were deeply moved by Flesh, calling it a book that makes readers feel glad to be alive and engaged with literature.
Szalay will receive £50,000 and a bronze trophy named Iris, in honor of Booker winner Iris Murdoch. The victory was unexpected to some, as Andrew Miller’s The Land in Winter had been the bookmakers’ favorite, followed by Kiran Desai, a former Booker laureate.
The 2025 judging panel also included actor Sarah Jessica Parker and writers Chris Power, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, and Kiley Reid. The Booker Prize, founded in 1969, honors the finest original English-language fiction published in the UK or Ireland each year. Past winners include Margaret Atwood, Arundhati Roy, Hilary Mantel, and Ian McEwan.
