Description
Description
From Booker Prize-shortlisted author David Szalay, comes a propulsive, hypnotic novel about a man who is unravelled by a series of events beyond his grasp. Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour--a married woman close to his mother's age--as his only companion. These encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that István himself can barely understand, and his life soon spirals out of control. As the years pass, he is carried gradually upwards on the currents of the twenty-first century's tides of money and power, moving from the army to the company of London's super-rich, with his own competing impulses for love, intimacy, status and wealth winning him unimaginable riches, until they threaten to undo him completely. Spare and penetrating, Flesh is the finest novel yet by a master of realism, asking profound questions about what drives a life: what makes it worth living, and what breaks it.
About the Author
About the Author
David Szalay is the author of Turbulence, London and the South-East, and All That Man Is. He's been awarded the Gordon Burn Prize and The Paris Review Plimpton Prize for Fiction and has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Born in Canada, he grew up in London and now lives in Vienna. His most recent novel is Flesh.
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
"Reckoning, in a clear-eyed and reasonable way, with the reality of fate's cold indifference...[Szalay is] a master of the flinty, spare sentence...at its heart, Flesh is about more than just the things that go unsaid: it is also about what is fundamentally unsayable, the ineffable things that sit at the centre of every life, hovering beyond the reach of language"
--The Guardian "Szalay offers a heartbreaking and revelatory portrait of a taciturn Hungarian man who serially attempts to build a new life after his traumatic adolescence... Propulsive... This tragedy will leave readers in awe."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "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 Booker Prize-winning author of Orbital "I can't think of another book that has lately haunted me more than David Szalay's Flesh--a book that so majestically and so beautifully depicts our journeys through this ever-changing world; and how we're all caught and carried by time and tide. When the world tests us, this is the story we'll return to, the one that will make us want to keep faith and believe, not only in the power of literature, but in each other."
--Paul Yoon, author of The Hive and the Honey "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 "Flesh is a wonderful novel--so brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money."
--David Nicholls, author of You Are Here
--The Guardian "Szalay offers a heartbreaking and revelatory portrait of a taciturn Hungarian man who serially attempts to build a new life after his traumatic adolescence... Propulsive... This tragedy will leave readers in awe."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "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 Booker Prize-winning author of Orbital "I can't think of another book that has lately haunted me more than David Szalay's Flesh--a book that so majestically and so beautifully depicts our journeys through this ever-changing world; and how we're all caught and carried by time and tide. When the world tests us, this is the story we'll return to, the one that will make us want to keep faith and believe, not only in the power of literature, but in each other."
--Paul Yoon, author of The Hive and the Honey "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 "Flesh is a wonderful novel--so brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money."
--David Nicholls, author of You Are Here
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
Publisher:
Scribner Book Company
Pub date:
2026-04-14
Length:
368 pages
The Allstora Membership
Membership Perks:
- Save 30% on all online store purchases
- Exclusive access to author's content
- You pay less, but authors still earn double
Membership Terms:
First Month:
$0.00
Monthly price:
$5.00
- To access membership discount simply log in and add to cart, discount applied automatically.
- One month free trial, cancel anytime. Membership renews on the 15th of each month.