Flesh

Flesh is a wonderful novel – so brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money

David Nicholls

A superb novel, written with great terse authority and allure: mordant, knowing and disturbingly wise

William Boyd

This is a marvellous novel. Compelling and elegant, merciless and poignant. David Szalay is an extraordinary writer

Tessa Hadley

‘Refreshing, illuminating and true… a moving work of art with a plot that compels and surprises and devastates’

Financial Times

[A] compulsive look at wealth and power, love and sex… Szalay has that rare ability to convey entire galaxies in the sparest writing

i

Flesh…has ensnared me… It’s rare to find prose this spare that doesn’t feel affect, but Szalay handles surface and depth with skill, as only great novelists can. Flesh is a revelatory novel

Sunday Times

In István David Szalay has created a modern existential antihero in the grand tradition of Camus and Dostoevsky. Amid the random accidents and desultory decisions that shape his life, and come to feel like fate, he is at once a cool observer and a towering presence. Taut, spare and perfectly structured, Flesh reads like a gripping thriller which slowly gathers to itself the emotional power of classical tragedy

Carys Davies, author of Clear

A propulsive novel from the Booker-shortlisted writer about the forces that make — and break — a life

Financial Times, *Books to Look Out For 2025*

It’s been a long time since I’ve been swallowed whole by a novel the way I was by this one… [There’s] so much searing insight into the way we live now. It’s a masterpiece

Observer, *Books to Look Out For 2025*