Flesh: A Novel (Booker Prize Winner)

Named a Best Book of the Year by the New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Vogue, Vulture, NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, Newsweek, Publishers Weekly , The Economist, Kirkus Reviews, the Associated Press, LitHub, Publishers Marketplace, The Telegraph (UK), The Times (UK), Globe and Mail (UK), and the Independent (UK)

"Szalay's straightforward, spare prose helps propel the novel as the effects of that tragedy reverberate throughout his life... The power of Flesh is Szalay's ability to let these moments speak for themselves, letting these simple interactions tell a tragic story." --Associated Press

Teenaged Istvâan lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbor--a married woman close to his mother's age, whom he begrudgingly helps with errands--as his only companion. But as these periodical encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that Istvâan himself can barely understand, his life soon spirals out of control, ending in a violent accident thatleaves a man dead. What follows is a rocky trajectory that sees Istvâan emigrate from Hungary to London, where he moves from job to job before finding steady work as a driver for London's billionaire class. At each juncture, his life is affected by the goodwill or self-interest of strangers. Through it all, Istvâan is a calm, detached observer of his own life, and through his eyes we experience a tragic twist on an immigrant "success story," brightened by moments of sensitivity, softness, and Szalay's keen observation.

David Szalay is the author of Turbulence, London and the South-East, and All That Man Is. His novels have won and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and he has been awarded the Gordon Burn Prize and The Paris Review Plimpton Prize for Fiction. Born in Canada, he grew up in London, and now lives in Vienna.