David Szalay's Flesh, published in 2025, tells a story as old as time: István, a fifteen-year-old boy who grew up living in a housing project in Hungary, finds success and eventually works his way into Hungary's top one-percent of income earners (and his descent back down again to poverty). After living much of his life in poverty, István is groomed by an older forty-two-year-old woman, whom he starts a sexual relationship with. Their affair causes strife with the woman's husband and sending him down a dark path as a soldier in Iraq. Later, István moves to London and becomes involved in a wealthy family's life -- including starting an affair with the family's matriarch. The family's patriarch dies, and István marries the woman he had been sleeping with. He experiences a sexual and economic awakening -- but not before dealing with the difficulties of getting involved in a complicated situation (and acclimating to an entirely new environment he never grew up in). At its core, it is a novel about male alienation and the life of quite solitude many people lead.
Critics have cited Szalay's slender and intriguing prose, and intriguing characters, as two of the novel's best aspects. The novel garnered critical acclaim and won a number of prestigious awards, including the 2025 Booker Prize. Keiran Goddard of The Guardian wrote a glowing review of the novel, calling it a "brilliantly spare portrait of a man."
