Canadian-born author David Szalay had his eye on the Booker Prize from the very early days of his latest novel, he said on stage Monday night.
He recalled a conversation with his editor Hannah Westland in which they debated the book’s title. She wondered aloud “whether she could imagine a novel called ‘Flesh’ winning” the prestigious literary award.
“Hannah, you have your answer, I guess,” he said as he accepted the prize.
“Flesh” tells the story of an emotionally detached Hungarian man who climbs England’s socioeconomic ladder after serving in Iraq.
Jurors for the prestigious U.K. award praise the novel for its economical use of language that propels the protagonist’s story forward.
Large swaths of his life are left off the page for the reader to fill in for themselves, including his incarceration as an adolescent and a tour of Iraq in young adulthood.
Szalay was chosen from 153 submitted novels by a panel that included past winner Roddy Doyle and “Sex and the City” star Sarah Jessica Parker.
“We loved the spareness of the writing,” Doyle said. “We loved how so much was revealed without us being overly aware that it was being revealed.”
Szalay was born in Montreal to a Canadian mother and Hungarian father, and they moved to England when he was a year old. He now splits his time between Austria and Hungary.
He was previously shortlisted for the Booker in 2016 for his book “All That Man Is,” a collection of nine interconnected short stories about men in different stages of life.
“There’s a feeling of wanting this book to do at least as well as the last book,” he told The Canadian Press after being shortlisted in September.
“I think everyone always wants their most recent book not to feel like a step back on their earlier books. So in that sense, having been shortlisted sets a very high bar.”
In his speech Monday night, Szalay described “Flesh” as a risky book, from its title to its spare form.
“I think it’s very important that we did take those risks,” he said, adding that fiction is the perfect place to do that.
“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. It’s almost free,” he said.
The prize, which goes to the book deemed the best work of English-language fiction published in the U.K. and Ireland, is worth roughly $90,000.
This is the first time a Canadian has taken home the award since 2019, when Margaret Atwood was named one of two winners for her novel “The Testaments,” a sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale.” She shared the award with the British author Bernardine Evaristo for “Girl, Woman, Other.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 10, 2025.
Nicole Thompson, The Canadian Press
