Flesh

‘Brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money’ David Nicholls
‘I was tearing through [Flesh], I never once slowed down’ Jennette McCurdy
‘Brilliance on every page’ Samantha Harvey
‘So much searing insight into the way we live now’ Observer

Through chance, luck and choice, one man’s life takes him from a modest apartment in Hungary to the elite society of London – in this captivating new novel about the forces that make and break our lives

Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he becomes isolated, with his neighbour – a married woman – as his only companion. When a clandestine relationship begins between them, his life spirals out of control.

As the years pass, István moves from the army to the circles of London’s elite. His competing impulses for love, intimacy, status and wealth win him unimaginable riches, until they threaten to undo him completely.

‘An astonishingly moving portrait of a man’s life’ Booker Prize Judges, 2025

‘A revelatory novel’ Sunday Times

‘Pure brilliance from the first to the (devastating) last sentence’ India Knight

‘Refreshing, illuminating and true’ Financial Times

‘One of the most astonishing books I’ve ever read’ Dua Lipa

‘Hugely entertaining, gripping like a thriller’ The Times

‘Visceral and compelling’ Gary Stevenson

‘Exciting, propulsive, emotional’ Sarah Jessica Parker

*A BOOK OF THE YEAR for the Guardian, Observer, Financial Times, Sunday Times, Independent, GQ and Daily Telegraph*

David Szalay is the author of six works of fiction, including London and the South-East, for which he was awarded the Betty Trask and Geoffrey Faber Memorial prizes, All That Man Is, for which he was awarded the Gordon Burn Prize and Plimpton Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Turbulence, which won the Edge Hill Prize. Born in Canada, he grew up in London, and now lives in Vienna. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages.