The book “Flesh”, by Anglo-Hungarian writer David Szalay, won this year’s Booker Prize, the organization announced at a ceremony in London.
The novel “Flesh”, described by the jury as “restrained but intense”, follows a man from adolescence to old age as he is devastated by a series of events beyond his control.
The narrative follows István, a 15-year-old teenager who lives with his mother in a discreet apartment complex in Hungary. Newly arrived in that location and with a reserved temperament, the young man has difficulty adapting to the school’s social rituals and ends up isolating himself.
His only company is his neighbor, a married woman, close to his mother’s age, with whom he begins a clandestine relationship that he barely understands and, from then on, his life spirals out of control.
As the years pass, István is swept along by the tides of money and power of the 21st century, passes through the army and ends up joining the circle of London’s wealthy elite. Driven by contradictory impulses – love, intimacy, status and wealth – he achieves unimaginable fortunes, until these same desires threaten to destroy him.
“We’ve never read anything like it. It’s, in many ways, a dark book, but it’s a pleasure to read,” said Irish writer Roddy Doyle, the first Booker winner to chair a jury panel, after explaining that all the members had read each of the six finalists three times and felt it “deserved to win for its uniqueness.”
In his award acceptance speech, David Szalay acknowledged that this was a risky book and title, recalling how his publisher told him that he could not imagine a novel titled “Flesh” winning the award.
However, the author said that he always returns to this “sense of risk” and considered that “it is very important to take risks”, especially in fiction, which is a literary genre that, unlike others, lends itself to this.
“It was not an easy book to write. I started it after having abandoned another and I felt a great pressure to write a good book, because abandoning one after having already abandoned another would be a great emotional burden for me.”