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Flesh

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Flesh

By: David Szalay
Narrated by: Daniel Weyman
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.


**WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025**

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.

‘Brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money’ David Nicholls

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

’So much searing insight into the way we live now’ Observer

‘I was tearing through Flesh, I never once slowed down’ Jennette McCurdy

‘Brilliance on every page’ Samantha Harvey

‘Hugely entertaining, gripping like a thriller’ The Times

© David Szalay 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

 Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Money Emotionally Gripping Heartfelt Tear-jerking

Critic reviews

Flesh is at once intricate and spacious, it flows both fast and deep. There's brilliance on every page. Szalay is an ingenious conductor of time, and of the fates and forces that give shape to a life (Samantha Harvey, author of Orbital)
Flesh is a wonderful novel – so brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money (David Nicholls)
A superb novel, written with great terse authority and allure: mordant, knowing and disturbingly wise (William Boyd)
This is a marvellous novel. Compelling and elegant, merciless and poignant. David Szalay is an extraordinary writer (Tessa Hadley)
I hope David Szalay wins the Booker this year... Flesh is a masterpiece, told with virtuosic economy... Pure brilliance from the first to the (devastating) last sentence (India Knight)
Refreshing, illuminating and true… a moving work of art with a plot that compels and surprises and devastates (Financial Times)
[A] compulsive look at wealth and power, love and sex… Szalay has that rare ability to convey entire galaxies in the sparest writing
Flesh…has ensnared me… It’s rare to find prose this spare that doesn’t feel affect, but Szalay handles surface and depth with skill, as only great novelists can. Flesh is a revelatory novel
Hypnotically tense and compelling… An astonishingly moving portrait of a man’s life (Booker Judges, 2025)
In István David Szalay has created a modern existential antihero in the grand tradition of Camus and Dostoevsky. Amid the random accidents and desultory decisions that shape his life, and come to feel like fate, he is at once a cool observer and a towering presence. Taut, spare and perfectly structured, Flesh reads like a gripping thriller which slowly gathers to itself the emotional power of classical tragedy (Carys Davies, author of Clear)
All stars
Most relevant
Nothing happens. Having gone on to listen to one of his other books, the themes just repeat. Nothing new to see here.

Totally meh.

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I read a lot of books, and when I start a new book, I always hope it's one of those really good ones that grabs you from beginning to end. This was one of those books, it was really good, even though it was a sad one.

A really good book

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This book won’t be for everyone. However it describes us all; human beings consisting of flesh that is vulnerable to desire and disgust, health and ill health, etc. It’s about how our embodied existence determines to some extent or perhaps to a greater extent what happens to us in life. More prosaically it is about sex and love and family and wealth. Nominated for the Booker Prize, I think it might well win. Read it when you have time to enjoy the simple yet startlingly evocative prose - it’s not a book for rushed moments.

Stunning story about the limitations and strengths of our embodied existence

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The repetitive "OK,he said" grated. The drifting nature of Estvan was well developed. The gaps between phases of his.life were rather obscure

economica

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Deeply moving account of a man’s life… Hungarian Istvan, whose fate pivots on an event that happens when he is fifteen. The spare, measured prose gives this story a heft and power which is remarkable. Excellent read by the narrator who delivers it with the same nonjudgmental tone it deserves: dispassionate yet compassionate at the same time. A definite recommend.

Life as it could be

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