David Szalay Wins The 2025 Booker Prize

David Szalay has won the Booker Prize 2025 for his sixth work of fiction, Flesh, becoming the first Hungarian-British author to win the award.

Written in spare prose, and spanning decades – from a Hungarian housing estate to the mansions of London’s rich elite – Flesh is a propulsive novel centred on an emotionally detached man who is unravelled by a series of events beyond his grasp. The novel is the sixth work of fiction by David Szalay, who was previously shortlisted for the Booker in 2016.

The other shortlisted titles are:

• The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller

• The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits

• Audition by Katie Kitamura

• The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

• Flashlight by Susan Choi