Hungarian-British writer David Szalay has claimed the prestigious Booker Prize for his novel Flesh, a work that offers a stark examination of masculinity without moralizing or providing easy answers. The announcement came on November 12, 2025, with judging committee chair Roddy Doyle describing the book as the one that stood out among other great novels.
A Different Approach to Masculinity
At a time when discussions about toxic and performative masculinity dominate cultural conversations, Szalay's novel takes a strikingly different approach. Rather than joining the chorus of criticism or offering prescriptions, the 51-year-old Vienna-based author presents masculinity in its raw, unvarnished form.
The novel follows protagonist István through various stages of life - from his Hungarian adolescence to military service and eventual exile in London. Szalay's portrayal is notable for what it doesn't do: it refuses to make István represent anything larger than his own faltering existence. His movements are slow and sparse, his silences speak louder than words, and his story unfolds without redemption arcs or moral lessons.
The Power of Ambiguity
What Szalay achieves in Flesh is not a grand statement about masculinity but rather an exposure of its fundamental architecture. The novel reveals the weight, absences, quiet humiliations, and undeniable hubris that characterize male experience. Its power lies in how it dismantles the idea of man as an actor with agency, instead exploring what happens when he becomes someone who is acted upon.
This is Szalay's sixth novel and his second Booker recognition, following his 2016 shortlisting for All That Man Is, which also mapped different stages of manhood. However, Flesh distinguishes itself through its intense focus on the texture of existence and its restoration of moral depth to fiction through ambiguity rather than certainty.
Subversive Silence in Contemporary Discourse
In today's cultural landscape, where masculinity is frequently analyzed, criticized, and prescribed solutions, Szalay's refusal to participate in this discourse feels both unsettling and subversive. He dismantles myths of masculinity not by correcting them but by completely ignoring their framework.
The men in Flesh are neither heroes nor villains. They simply exist in body and flesh, without judgment or categorization. As Doyle noted, the result is a dark book but a joy to read - a novel that explores not just men themselves, but what remains when language, certainty, and myth are stripped away.
The Booker Prize victory establishes Szalay as one of the most important literary voices examining contemporary masculinity, offering readers a challenging but essential perspective on what it means to be a man in today's world.
