The British-Hungarian writer David Szalay is with his novel Flesh the winner of the Booker Prize, the most important novel prize in the English-speaking world. This was announced in London on Monday evening. The 51-year-old Szalay, who was shortlisted for the influential literary prize for the second time, will receive prize money of 50,000 pounds (about 56,000 euros).
The novel shows the life of István, a silent figure whom we follow from his poor adolescence in Hungary, through his military service in Iraq to his migration to London, where after wandering he penetrates the circles of the hyper-rich.
Strikingly Fleshwhich was translated into Dutch by Auke Leistra this spring as The meat: life seems to largely happen to István. His passive attitude is reflected by the limited number of words that István usually uses; in the sparsely written novel, his verbal response often consists of little more than a desperate, shrugging “okay”.
Not a simple soul
Still, the jury fell for the depth that the novel had to offer. István’s inarticulateness was the basis for his novel, David Szalay said in interviews, including last weekend, when he performed in The Hague at the Crossing Border literary festival. Because István is not a simple soul and certainly not unfeeling, according to Szalay; He just doesn’t have all the words ready right away because he feels that way.
“I wanted a character who wouldn’t explain himself,” Szalay said this weekend NRC. “In literary novels, the explanation that characters give to themselves is often the core of the book, but I wanted something different. I wanted to emphasize life as a physical experience.” It makes Flesh a novel in which a lot happens and a lot is felt, without giving big words to those feelings.
Flesh was, as jury chairman Roddy Doyle said in his announcement speech, the novel to which the jury, after three intensive readings, awarded the prize because of its “complete singularity”, with which he probably meant: intense and unique in its own unique way. “We’ve never read anything like this before. We loved the sobriety of the writing,” Doyle, himself a writer and former Booker winner, told the BBC. “The dialogues were great and the absence of dialogues was great.”
Previous nomination
David Szalay (1974), who was born in Canada to a Hungarian father and a British mother and now lives in Vienna, wrote six books. He was also nominated for the Booker Prize in 2016 with the novel All That Man Is (What a man is), without winning then.
This year too, he was not the favorite for the prize in advance: the British bookmakers estimated Kiran Desai’s chances of winning (The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny) and Andrew Miller (The Land in Winter) just a little higher. The other nominees were Susan Choi (Flashlight), Katie Kitamura (Audition) and Ben Markovits (The Rest of Our Lives). Last year the prize went to British Samantha Harvey for her space novel Orbital.
NEW: Give this item as a gift
As an NRC subscriber you can subscribe every month 10 items give as a gift to someone without an NRC subscription. The recipient can read the article directly, without a paywall.