About this Event
Join us for a special literary evening with David Szalay, the 2025 Booker Prize winner for Flesh — a spare, minimalist novel that has earned him global acclaim. The evening will explore his distinctive narrative voice, the themes that run through his work, and the questions raised about masculinity, power and modern existence that continue to shape his writing.
In Flesh, Szalay traces the life of István, a Hungarian man whose journey from adolescence to middle age carries him from a quiet town in Hungary to the dizzying world of London’s super-rich. Told with Szalay’s characteristic precise prose, the novel explores desire, fate, and the physical and emotional experience of being alive, inviting readers into moments of intimacy, tension, and revelation. Bold, haunting, and deeply propulsive, Flesh won the Booker judges’ praise for its singularity and compelling engagement with what it means to live in a body and a world beyond our control.
About David Szalay
Born in Canada and raised in London, Szalay now lives in Vienna and has written six works of fiction translated into over 20 languages, as well as several BBC radio dramas. In 2010 Szalay appeared in the Telegraph’s list of the top 20 British writers under 40, and he was selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2013. His debut, London and the South-East, won the Betty Trask Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, while All That Man Is received the Gordon Burn Prize, the Plimpton Prize for Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2016. His short story collection Turbulence won the Edge Hill Prize in 2019. With Flesh, he became the first British-Hungarian author to win the Booker Prize, confirming his place as one of contemporary European fiction’s most distinctive voices.
This free event welcomes all lovers of literature. Spaces are limited, and registration via Eventbrite is essential.
Copies of David Szalay’s Flesh will be available for purchase on site from Primrose Hill Booksellers.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Liszt Institute London, 17-19 Cockspur Street, London, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00
