British-Hungarian novelist David Szalay has been awarded the 2025 Booker Prize for his book Flesh, which the judges hailed as an unusual and powerful work. The novel traces a single central figure, Istvan, across three phases of life — from a bleak Hungarian housing estate to the rarified circles of London’s ultra‑wealthy — creating what critics describe as a striking portrait of contemporary masculinity.
Chair of the judging panel Roddy Doyle commended the book’s distinctiveness and economical prose, noting its deliberate use of empty pages and sparse dialogue to convey emotion. Doyle said the novel is bleak in places but was a joy to read for the panel. Booker Prize Foundation chief executive Gaby Wood said the judges found Flesh to be spare, disciplined, urgent, honest and deeply affecting, and that Szalay has pushed boundaries with this work.
The judging panel included actress Sarah Jessica Parker. The book has been championed by high‑profile supporters: pop star Dua Lipa selected Flesh for her book club and interviewed Szalay at the New York Public Library, and musician Stormzy recorded an extract that was played during the Booker ceremony in London.
Szalay told broadcasters he felt somewhat dazed after the announcement. He accepted the £50,000 prize at the ceremony. Flesh is his sixth novel; Szalay was previously shortlisted for the Booker in 2016 for All That Man Is.
Critical response has been broadly positive. The Guardian praised the book as a brilliantly spare portrait and a thrilling investigation of what it means to be alive, while the Sunday Times highlighted the ambitious choice to follow one character through three defining stages of life. Booker organisers described the novel as a meditation on class, power, intimacy, migration and masculinity, and as a compelling account of how formative experiences can echo across a lifetime.
The judges deliberated for more than five hours before selecting the winner from a six‑book shortlist. The other shortlisted titles were:
– Susan Choi — Flashlight
– Kiran Desai — The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
– Katie Kitamura — Audition
– Ben Markovits — The Rest of Our Lives
– Andrew Miller — The Land in Winter
The Booker Prize is one of the UK’s most prestigious awards for fiction written in English. Past winners have included Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Bernardine Evaristo, Hilary Mantel and Douglas Stuart.