Elites and Affairs: A Moral Dilemma
Montreal-born writer of Hungarian heritage David Szalay was named the 2025 Booker Prize Winner for his novel, Flesh.
Szalay was born in Canada, grew up in London, lived in Hungary, and now resides in Vienna. It is then unsurprising that he told The Guardian his latest book was about the “underlying experience of being poised between two places and feeling not 100% at home in either of them”.
Nearly ten years after Szalay’s All That Man Is was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the prize-winning Flesh was found by the judges to be “hypnotically tense and compelling,” and an “astonishingly moving portrait of a man’s life.” I agree with the judges — I was hooked from the start, and I sped through the book in a couple of days.
Flesh has an arresting and uncomfortable premise. Its protagonist, István, a timid, pubescent 15-year-old, is living with his mother in Hungary. His friend asks him if he’s done “it” before, saying a girl he knows is willing to sleep with István. Sexually confused and awkward, the interaction goes nowhere. However, István then starts helping his neighbour with her grocery shopping. The forty-two year old shockingly grooms him, and, in a mixture of disgust and desire, István becomes obsessed with her. The interaction eventually culminates in a violent altercation with her husband that lands István in juvenile prison.
The reader only sees select episodes from István’s complicated and ever-evolving life, with the novel characterized by often disjointed time jumps. We see István move from prison, to military service in Iraq, to private security in London. “Money exists as a way of distributing power,” Szalay notes. As István secures work as driver and bodyguard to wealthy Karl Nyman and his family, he becomes increasingly immersed in the super-elite circles of London through an affair with his employer’s wife. Eventually, he marries her — a fulfilment of a truly unconventional rags-to-riches story.
At the forefront of Flesh is the idea of sex and the body. Sex is difficult to write about. In Szalay’s words, “It’s always a challenge to avoid, sort of tipping into a kind of pornography, or writing about it in a sort of way that becomes ludicrous, or both.” Szalay calls it a “risk” to “write about sex from a specifically male perspective,” perhaps aware that Flesh would be caught up in current discussions about toxic masculinity and the positionality of contemporary male authors.
To dwell on this matter, however, would be to take away from the raw emotional impact that the book has on the reader. István is both a morally ambiguous and unlikeable character. Callous in the way he views and thinks about women, and unkind to many in his life, it is hard to connect or feel sympathy with him. However, the feeling of being lost and isolated in life is a thoroughly universal, human experience. Szalay, in Flesh, “wanted to write about what it [was] like to be a living body in the world,” and this is exactly the impression the novel leaves.
Flesh holds a 3.8/5 star average on Goodreads, with many criticizing the novel’s simple prose style. Indeed, István’s most commonly uttered phrases are “okay” and “I don’t know”. Often, his inability to emphasize or interpret his own emotions is completely frustrating, and his minimal dialogue leaves much to the reader’s imagination. On the other hand, this makes the reader’s experience ever more personal and unique. Between the sparing prose and one-line paragraphs is space to breathe and reflect. The ending is unresolved, with a bereaved István moving back to Hungary.
Flesh is not a book for everyone. I, however, found it strangely hypnotic. Recently, a movie adaptation of the book has been announced. I can see plenty of scope for long, still shots of the brooding István pacing the streets — but I can only wish its scriptwriter the best of luck with the dialogue.