Name: Flesh
Rating: 3.65 (30 reviews)

David Szalay

Flesh

"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"--

A Novel (Booker Prize Winner)

Plattypus

⭐3.5⭐ the writing style being so minimalistic kind of threw me off at first, but when i got used to it it was hardly an issue, criticisms i have for this novel are minimal and are made from personal taste in that istvan did seem a bit too disconnected from the world except when it came to sex up until the later half which kinda sometimes made it a bit of a chore to really immerse myself in it. Again whether this is intentional or not i do not know, if it is and i seem to think it is then it did a great job and i just wasn't the biggest fan of it

A lot that exists in the white spaces and what is unconveyed. Felt a deep sense of solitude and loneliness throughout reading this

Xi Hui Teo

the minimal prose is really effective but i can't shake the feeling that this novel could've been so much more

szalay writes about masculinity and trauma-based passivity in such a sparse yet engrossing way. minimalist prose can be such a hit or miss for me but here, it adds so much depth to istván's character (and perhaps the geopolitical commentary on what this presumptuous american thinks is the uk barreling toward brexit and hungary wrestling with its post-soviet identity?). the whitespace is haunting.

alice

lowkey kmsed 100 times reading this book bc why can’t anything go well for him for more than a day. 

it was an easy read though i really enjoyed it 

nina 

lowkey kmsed 100 times reading this book bc why can’t anything go well for him for more than a day. 

it was an easy read though i really enjoyed it 

I swear bro spoke like 4 words and got an AP like wtf haven’t read a book with a male protagonist in a while though it was lowk a snooze fest

Angeleeka

Just read Western Lane by Chetna Mario. It’s not the same but really it is. Sparse language and cold narrative. This reminded me a lot of G. when it started but then the jumping around got blander and blander. Maybe I’m a sucker for the beginning and how messed up it was (maybe I’d like This Little Life, god help me). It was fine, put me on the Booker committee.

Eli Alvah Huckabee

Very austere, but reads very well. I sort of expected it to suddenly explode, surprise, but it just carried on in it’s start and stop sort of way. 

Krzysztof Tokarski

It was OK 

Very austere, but reads very well. I sort of expected it to suddenly explode, surprise, but it just carried on in it’s start and stop sort of way. 

mara henderson

Pared back style, sharp dialogue, compelling. A touching story following a man’s vicissitudes from Communist Hungary to present-day London.

Laura Dobie

katie xin

Ilyés Ev

Amalie

Molly Bridge

Jess Z

Vanessa Dendinger

Imogen west

WINNER OF THE 2025 BOOKER PRIZE AND A NATIONAL BESTSELLER Finalist for the Kirkus Prize | Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence From “the shrewdest writer on contemporary masculinity we have” (Esquire), a “captivating...hypnotic...virtuosic” (The Baffler) novel about a man whose life veers off course due to a series of unforeseen circumstances. Teenaged István 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 is soon isolated, drawn instead into a series of events that leave him forever a stranger to peers, his mother, and himself. In the years that follow, István is born along by the goodwill, or self-interest, of strangers, charting a rocky yet upward trajectory that lands him further from his childhood, and the defining events that abruptly ended it, than he could possibly have imagined. A collection of intimate moments over the course of decades, Flesh chronicles a man at odds with himself—estranged from and by the circumstances and demands of a life not entirely under his control and the roles that he is asked to play. Shadowed by the specter of past tragedy and the apathy of modernity, the tension between István and all that alienates him hurtles forward until sudden tragedy again throws life as he knows it in jeopardy. “Spare and detached on the page, lush in resonance beyond it” (NPR), Flesh traces the imperceptible but indelible contours of unresolved trauma and its aftermath amid the precarity and violence of an ever-globalizing Europe with incisive insight, unyielding pathos, and startling humanity.

Flesh

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