Canadian-born author David Szalay awarded 2025 Booker Prize for Flesh

Szalay: ‘It’s almost free’ to make a novel

Hungarian-British author David Szalay was born in Montreal to a Canadian mother and a Hungarian father. The family moved when he was young, eventually settling in London, where he grew up. He currently lives in Vienna.

He previously made the Booker short list in 2016 for All That Man Is.

Flesh begins by telling the story of a teenager whose unhealthy relationship with an older woman sends his life spiralling out of control. The rags-to-riches narrative follows him as he grows up, drifting from a housing estate in central Europe to the mansions of London’s super-rich.

Upon winning the award, Szalay spoke of the freedom that writing novels affords authors to take creative risks.

“It can take aesthetic risks, formal risks, perhaps even moral risks, which many other forms, narrative forms, can’t quite do to the same extent,” he said. “I think part of the reason for that is just that novels are so relatively cheap to produce. All you need to do is keep one writer supplied with coffee and a few other essentials for a year or two, and you’ve got a novel. I mean, it’s almost free.”