British writer David Szalay won the Booker Prize for fiction on Monday for “Flesh,” the story of one man's life from working-class origins in Hungary to mega-wealth in Britain, in which what isn’t on the page is just as important as what is.
“Using only the sparest of prose, this hypnotically tense and compelling book becomes an astonishingly moving portrait of a man’s life,” the Booker Prize judges said of their winning choice.
Szalay, 51, beat Kiran Desai’s ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’ to take the coveted literary award, which brings a 50,000-pound ($66,000) payday and a big boost to the winner’s sales and profile.
Desai missed out on becoming only the fifth double winner in Booker Prize’s 56-year history, having won the coveted literary prize for fiction back in 2006 for ‘The Inheritance of Loss’.
Other finalists included Andrew Miller of Britain.
Who is David Szalay?
David Szalay is a Canadian-Hungarian-British writer born in Montreal to a Hungarian father and a Canadian mother. He was raised in the UK and now lives in Vienna.
Szalay, author of six works of fiction, had previously been shortlisted for the prestigious literary honour in 2016 for his last work, "All That Man Is". The book is a series of stories about nine wildly different men.
About ‘Flesh’
David Szalay’s book recounts in spare, unadorned style the life of taciturn István, from a teenage relationship with an older woman through time as a struggling immigrant in Britain to an unlikely denizen of London high society.
In an interview with the Booker Prize organisation after his novel was longlisted, Szalay said he knew he wanted to write a book that began in Hungary, ended in England, and explored “the cultural and economic divides that characterise” contemporary Europe.
“Writing about a Hungarian immigrant at the time when Hungary joined the EU seemed like an obvious way to go,” he said.
‘Wrote Flesh under pressure’: David Szalay
David Szalay said he wrote “Flesh” under pressure, after abandoning a novel he'd been working on for four years.
He said the story grew from “simple, fundamental ingredients.” He knew he "wanted a book that was partly Hungarian and partly English” and was about “life as a physical experience.”
Accepting his trophy at London's Old Billingsgate — a former fish market turned glitzy events venue — Szalay thanked the judges for rewarding his “risky” novel.
He recalled asking his editor, “whether she could imagine a novel called ‘Flesh’ winning the Booker Prize.” “You have your answer,” he said.