Inside the 2025 Booker Prize Winner and the Author Behind “Flesh”

Hungarian-British writer David Szalay has been awarded the 2025 Booker Prize for his novel Flesh, a deeply human story that follows a Hungarian immigrant navigating ambition, love, and loss across borders.

The Booker Prize, considered one of the most prestigious literary honors in the world, celebrates the best English-language novel published in the U.K. and Ireland each year.

Flesh was praised by the judges for its minimalist yet emotional prose and its ability to capture universal questions of belonging and purpose. Born in Canada and raised in the U.K., Szalay has lived across Europe, experiences that influence his writing about dislocation and identity.

This marks his second major recognition after being shortlisted in 2016 for All That Man Is. The 2025 shortlist also included Kiran Desai and Andrew Miller, but Szalay’s nuanced portrayal of masculinity and migration stood out as a defining work of contemporary fiction.

With a £50,000 award and global acclaim, Szalay joins a literary legacy that includes Margaret Atwood, Arundhati Roy, and Salman Rushdie.