Author:David Szalay
Published: 2025
Pages: 368
Prize: Shortlist, Man Booker 2025
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Flesh follows István, a lonely Hungarian teen whose clandestine relationship with an older neighbour spirals into tragedy, forcing him to flee to London. As an immigrant, he drifts through jobs, observing life with detached calm, shaped by others’ whims. Szalay’s immersive novel traces decades of unresolved trauma, precarity, and fleeting connections, culminating in another shattering tragedy. A stark, poignant exploration of displacement and the unseen scars of survival.
Complexity
CEFR: B2
Plot Complexity: moderate
Language Complexity: light
Ideas Complexity: moderate
Blurb
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 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 István himself can barely understand, his life soon spirals out of control, ending in a violent accident that leaves a man dead.
What follows is a rocky trajectory that sees István 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, István 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.
Fast-paced and immersive, Flesh reveals István’s life through intimate moments, with lovers, employers, and family members, charted over the course of decades. As the story unfolds, the tension between what is seen and unseen, what can and cannot be said, hurtles forward until finally—with everything at stake—sudden tragedy again throws life as István knows it in jeopardy. Spare and penetrating, 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.
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