WINNER OF THE 2025 BOOKER PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2026 ANDREW CARNAGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION
A New York Times Best Book of the Year
A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year
An Indigo Book of the Year

"Hypnotically tense and compelling. . . . An astonishingly moving portrait of a man’s life." —Booker Prize Judges, 2025

"[Szalay is] a master of the flinty, spare sentence. . . . At its heart, Flesh is about more than just the things that go unsaid: it is also about what is fundamentally unsayable, the ineffable things that sit at the centre of every life, hovering beyond the reach of language." —The Guardian

"[Szalay's] elegant, stripped-back prose powers a narrative rich in insight and pathos." —The Economist

"Hypnotic." —The Wall Street Journal

"[David Szalay] is a master at probing the insecurities and regrets of men. . . . A boon for fans of Szalay’s straightforward, humane fiction in that it has yielded his best work to date in Flesh, a gentle yet deeply affecting novel. . . . If you’ve ever woken up to the realization that your life has become something you never planned for, anticipated, or desired, you’ll likely find Flesh all too human." —The Boston Globe

"[Szalay is] the shrewdest writer on contemporary masculinity we have. . . . Written in Szalay’s boldly spare style, Flesh is as potent a portrait of the myth of free will as I can remember. It’s also a page-turner. You’ll race through it." —Esquire UK

"Spare and detached on the page, lush in resonance beyond it, Szalay's new novel reads a bit like an immigrant bildungsroman flavored with Albert Camus." —NPR

"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-Magazine

"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

"Szalay offers a heartbreaking and revelatory portrait of a taciturn Hungarian man who serially attempts to build a new life after his traumatic adolescence. . . . This tragedy will leave readers in awe." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"An indelible portrait of male alienation." —People

"As István’s life accumulates, [Flesh] only grows more captivating, more hypnotic, the question of freedom more charged. . . . Instead of providing answers, Szalay poses inquiry, after inquiry, denying us what a lesser writer might feel compelled to provide. . . . Virtuosic." —The Baffler

"[A] literary achievement. . . . Szalay digs in to find a linguistic style that operates on the level of the sentence and, equally important, in the spaces between sentences." —Quill & Quire

"Very smart and stylish." —Zadie Smith, The Guardian

"A modern existential antihero in the great tradition of Camus and Dostoevsky. . . . Perfectly structured, Flesh reads like a gripping thriller which slowly gathers to itself the emotional power of classical tragedy." —Carys Davies

"This is a marvellous novel. Compelling and elegant, merciless and poignant. David Szalay is an extraordinary writer." —Tessa Hadley

"A superb novel, written with great terse authority and allure: mordant, knowing, and disturbingly wise." —William Boyd

"With exquisite control and precision and insight, David Szalay renders lost men that you cannot forget." —Rachel Kushner

"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

"Flesh is a wonderful novel—so brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money." —David Nicholls

"A masterpiece, told with virtuosic economy. . . . Pure brilliance from the first to the (devastating) last sentence." —India Knight

"I can’t think of another book that has lately haunted me more than David Szalay’s Flesh—a book that so majestically and so beautifully depicts our journeys through this ever-changing world; and how we’re all caught and carried by time and tide. When the world tests us, this is the story we’ll return to, the one that will make us want to keep faith and believe, not only in the power of literature, but in each other." —Paul Yoon