The winner of this year’s Booker prize, Hungarian-British writer David Szalay, has often been accused of overwriting. His earlier short story collections and novels sometimes lost readers in their ornate, over-detailed descriptions. It seems he’s taken that criticism to heart. After abandoning a novel he had been working on for nearly four years in 2020, Szalay has returned with Flesh – a book that, contrary to its title, strips the story right to the bone.
A short, propulsive read, Flesh took the prize because of its singularity. The judging panel said: “Szalay has a talent for only telling the good parts. This is the story of a man’s life, from his youth to deep into adulthood, and yet there are gaps left in the protagonist’s life that Szalay leaves uncovered. He generously allows the reader to fill them in.”
For our reviewer, Tory Young, who researches 21st-century literature, the novel was “deeply affecting.”
