20 h. ago ‘It’s notoriously hard to write about sex’: David Szalay on Flesh, his astounding Booker prize

The novel’s protagonist is violent, libidinous and so inarticulate he says ‘OK’ some 500 times. So how did the author turn his story into a tragic masterpiece?When we meet the morning after the announcement of this year’s Booker prize, David Szalay, the winner, seems an extremely genial and gentle author to have created one of the most morally ambiguous characters in recent contemporary fiction. His sixth novel, Flesh, about the rise and fall of a Hungarian immigrant to the UK, is unlike anything you have read before.Szalay (pronounced “Sol-oy”) is often described as “Hungarian-British”, but that has offended Canadians this morning, he says. His mother was Canadian and he was born in that country, where his Hungarian father had moved a few years earlier. “I’m arguably more Canadian than Hungarian.” Now 51, he grew up in England, graduated from Oxford University, and lived in Hungary for 15 years. To make things more confusing, he is over from Vienna, where he now lives with his wife...

Politics

28 h. ago One of my favourite books of the year just won the Booker Prize – and it’s 22% off on Amazon

Judge Sarah Jessica Parker described whittling down the list as “real agony”

Politics

40 h. ago David Szalay’s Flesh is the most deserved Booker Prize winner in years

The British-Hungarian author’s triumph caps off what has already been a wonderful year for the UK’s most prestigious award for fiction, writes Martin Chilton

Politics

40 h. ago David Szalay wins Booker prize with ‘extraordinary and singular’ novel Flesh

The British-Hungarian author’s novel exploring modern masculinity was chosen unanimously as this year’s winner, says judging chair Roddy Doyle

Culture

40 h. ago The risky strategy of Booker winner Flesh pays off | Justine Jordan

The protagonist’s inner life is hidden from the reader in this highly original novelDavid Szalay wins 2025 Booker prize for ‘dark’ FleshReflecting on the Booker judging process, chair Roddy Doyle stressed the “singularity” of Flesh, the most unusual novel on the shortlist. In his sixth book, Hungarian-British writer David Szalay takes a classic story arc – one man’s journey through life, from childhood to old age – and presents it in a radically new and challenging way, scooping out the interiority that usually powers the novel form.We meet his protagonist, István, as a bored 15-year-old in a Hungarian backwater. He is seduced by a middle-aged neighbour into a relationship suffused with shame and disgust; a confused act of violence knocks his life off course; he joins the military and is stationed in Kuwait; he moves to London and works as a bouncer before the rising tides of global capital carry him, for a while, into the monied elite. And all the while, we are cut off from his tho...

Events

48 h. ago Andrew Miller is bookies’ favourite to win 2025 Booker prize

The Land in Winter has shortest odds of victory, ahead of Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and SunnyAndrew Miller is the bookmakers’ favourite to win the 2025 Booker prize, which will be announced on Monday evening in London.The English author tops the William Hill odds at 6/4 for The Land in Winter, a novel set in 1960s England which follows two marriages struggling under the weight of postwar class divisions, professional dislocation and emotional estrangement. Miller was previously shortlisted for the Booker in 2001 for his novel Oxygen. Continue reading...

Politics

54 h. ago Two authors named as favourites to win 2025 Booker Prize for fiction

British novelist Andrew Miller and Indian author Kiran Desai are the favourites to win the award at a ceremony in London on Monday

Culture

56 h. ago Andrew Miller and Kiran Desai are favorites to win the Booker Prize for fiction

British novelist Andrew Miller and Indian author Kiran Desai are the favorites to win the Booker Prize for fiction at a ceremony in London

Politics

4 d. ago ‘I had a year to write it from scratch’: the 2025 Booker finalists on the stories behind their novels

A newspaper report about a missing girl, the memory of a midwinter emergency Susan Choi, Andrew Miller, David Szalay and others on what inspired their shortlisted books The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny Continue reading...

Culture

1 week ago Attention by Anne Enright review – sparkling reflections on life and literature

Unabashed and morally generous, the Booker winner writes like a sharp, funny, fallen angelIn addition to producing eight novels over the past 30 years, Anne Enright has always written nonfiction around the edges. This has mostly taken the form of essays for the literary pages of the NYRB, the LRB and, indeed, the Guardian. Attention is a collection of 24 of the best, each with a new brief introduction by Enright herself. The work is culled mostly from the past 10 years, with the latest dated “Autumn 2025”, which suggests that she was still blowing on the ink as it went to press.A decade ago most of these pieces would probably have been called “personal essays”, but that now seems redundant. Everything is personal with Enright, which is what makes you want to read her even on subjects that don’t initially appeal. The cocaine trade in Honduras, say, or the production of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days in a sodden field in the Aran Islands. And just when you worry that ...

Politics

2 w. ago ‘They disappeared when the wall came down’: German author Jenny Erpenbeck on the objects that contain vast histories

From the drip catchers of coffee pots to the typewriter she used for her first works, the International Booker prize-winning writer reflects on the hidden significance of everyday itemsDrip catcherThe carpet hangers disappeared from the rear courtyards when wall-to-wall carpeting and vacuum cleaners were introduced – when the Persian carpets had been bombed away, when there was no money to buy new ones, when the men who used to carry the rolled-up carpets down the stairs for cleaning had been killed in the war.The shop where I used to take my tights to get them mended when they had a run in them, back when I was a little girl – a shop called “Run Express” – disappeared when the Wall came down and the west was able to sell its cheap tights in the east. Continue reading...

Culture

2 w. ago Booker Prize announces launch of first award for children’s fiction

The Children’s Booker Prize winner will be chosen by a combined panel of child and adult judges and awarded £50,000.

Events

3 w. ago Is Ian McEwan right – has the water bottle trend become ‘deranged’?

As the Booker Prize-winning author claims that the modern obsession with slaking our thirst has gotten out of hand, Helen Coffey looks at why hydration routines are the next big generational divide

Politics

3 w. ago 19 best new books to read, from Taylor Jenkins Reid to David Szalay

Discover debut novelists and immersive page-turners from acclaimed authors

Politics