LONDON: Canadian-Hungarian-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.
Szalay, 51, beat five other finalists, including favorites Andrew Miller of Britain and Indian author Kiran Desai, to take the coveted literary award, which brings a 50,000-pound payday and a big boost to the winner’s sales and profile.
He was chosen from 153 submitted novels by a judging panel that included Irish writer Roddy Doyle and “Sex and the City” star Sarah Jessica Parker.
Doyle said “Flesh” — a book “about living, and the strangeness of living” — emerged as the judges’ unanimous choice after a five-hour meeting.
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 unlikely denizen of London high society.
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.
Doyle, who chaired the judges, said István belongs to a group overlooked in fiction: a working-class man. He said that since reading it, he looks more closely when he walks past bouncers standing in the doorways of Dublin pubs.
“I’m kind of giving him a second look, because I feel I might know him a bit better,” said Doyle, whose funny, poignant stories of working-class Dublin life won him the 1993 Booker Prize for “Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.”
“It presents us with a certain type of man that invites us to look behind the face.”
Szalay, who was born in Montreal to a Hungarian father and Canadian mother, raised in the UK and now lives in Vienna, was previously a Booker finalist in 2016 for “All That Man Is,” a series of stories about nine wildly different men.
“Flesh” was praised by many critics but frustrated others with its refusal to fill in the gaps in István’s story – great swathes of life, including incarceration and wartime service in Iraq, occur off the page – and its stubbornly unexpressive central character, whose most common remark is “Okay.”
“He is quite an opaque character,” Szalay acknowledged at a news conference. “He doesn’t explain himself to the reader. He isn’t very articulate. So I really didn’t know quite how people would respond to him as a character.”
Doyle said the judges “loved the spareness of the writing.”
“We loved how so much was revealed without us being overly aware that it was being revealed. … Watching this man grow, age, and learning so much about him – despite him, in a way,” he said. “If the gaps were filled, it would be less of a book.”
Founded in 1969 and open to English-language novels from around the world, the Booker Prize has established a reputation for transforming writers’ careers. Winners have included Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Arundhati Roy, Margaret Atwood and Samantha Harvey, who took the 2024 prize for space station story “Orbital.”
Szalay said he hadn’t thought about what he will do with his prize money, beyond “going on a nice little holiday with a bit of it and put the rest in the bank.”
Last year’s winner Harvey, who handed Szalay the Booker Prize trophy, had some advice.
“Buckle up, and get a good accountant,” she said.
Writer David Szalay wins prestigious Booker Prize for fiction with his earthy novel ‘Flesh’
https://arab.news/b7hwh
Writer David Szalay wins prestigious Booker Prize for fiction with his earthy novel ‘Flesh’
- “Flesh” was praised by many critics but frustrated others with its refusal to fill in the gaps in István’s story
As an uncertain 2026 begins, virtual journeys back to 2016 become a trend
- Over the past few weeks, millions have been sharing throwback photos to that time on social media, kicking off one of the first viral trends of the year
LONDON: The year is 2016. Somehow it feels carefree, driven by Internet culture. Everyone is wearing over-the-top makeup.
At least, that’s how Maren Nævdal, 27, remembers it — and has seen it on her social feeds in recent days.
For Njeri Allen, also 27, the year was defined by the artists topping the charts that year, from Beyonce to Drake to Rihanna’s last music releases. She also remembers the Snapchat stories and an unforgettable summer with her loved ones. “Everything felt new, different, interesting and fun,” Allen says.
Many people, particularly those in their 20s and 30s, are thinking about 2016 these days. Over the past few weeks, millions have been sharing throwback photos to that time on social media, kicking off one of the first viral trends of the year — the year 2026, that is.
With it have come the memes about how various factors — the sepia hues over Instagram photos, the dog filters on Snapchat and the music — made even 2016’s worst day feel like the best of times.
Part of the look-back trend’s popularity has come from the realization that 2016 was already a decade ago – a time when Nævdal says she felt like people were doing “fun, unserious things” before having to grow up.
But experts point to 2016 as a year when the world was on the edge of the social, political and technological developments that make up our lives today. Those same advances — such as developments under US President Donald Trump and the rise of AI — have increased a yearning for even the recent past, and made it easier to get there.
2016 marked a year of transition
Nostalgia is often driven by a generation coming of age — and its members realizing they miss what childhood and adolescence felt like. That’s certainly true here. But some of those indulging in the online journeys through time say something more is at play as well.
It has to do with the state of the world — then and now.
By the end of 2016, people would be looking ahead to moments like Trump’s first presidential term and repercussions of the United Kingdom leaving the EU after the Brexit referendum. A few years after that, the COVID-19 pandemic would send most of the world into lockdown and upend life for nearly two years.
Janelle Wilson, a professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, says the world was “on the cusp of things, but not fully thrown into the dark days that were to come.”
“The nostalgia being expressed now, for 2016, is due in large part to what has transpired since then,” she says, also referencing the rise of populism and increased polarization. “For there to be nostalgia for 2016 in the present,” she added, “I still think those kinds of transitions are significant.”
For Nævdal, 2016 “was before a lot of the things we’re dealing with now.” She loved seeing “how embarrassing everyone was, not just me,” in the photos people have shared.
“It felt more authentic in some ways,” she says. Today, Nævdal says, “the world is going downhill.”
Nina van Volkinburg, a professor of strategic fashion marketing at University of the Arts, London, says 2016 marked the beginning of “a new world order” and of “fractured trust in institutions and the establishment.” She says it also represented a time of possibility — and, on social media, “the maximalism of it all.”
This was represented in the bohemian fashion popularized in Coachella that year, the “cut crease” makeup Nævdal loved and the dance music Allen remembers.
“People were new to platforms and online trends, so were having fun with their identity,” van Volkinburg says. “There was authenticity around that.”
And 2016 was also the year of the “boss babe” and the popularity of millennial pink, van Volkinburg says, indications of young people coming into adulthood in a year that felt hopeful.
Allen remembers that as the summer she and her friends came of age as high school graduates. She says they all knew then that they would remember 2016 forever.
Ten years on, having moved again to Taiwan, she said “unprecedented things are happening” in the world. “Both of my homes are not safe,” she said of the US and Taiwan, “it’s easier to go back to a time that’s more comfortable and that you felt safe in.”
Feelings of nostalgia are speeding up
In the last few days, Nævdal decided to hide the social media apps on her phone. AI was a big part of that decision. “It freaks me out that you can’t tell what’s real anymore,” she said.
“When I’ve come off of social media, I feel that at least now I know the things I’m seeing are real,” she added, “which is quite terrifying.”
The revival of vinyl record collections, letter writing and a fresh focus on the aesthetics of yesterday point to nostalgia continuing to dominate trends and culture. Wilson says the feeling has increased as technology makes nostalgia more accessible.
“We can so readily access the past or, at least, versions of it,” she said. “We’re to the point where we can say, ‘Remember last week when we were doing XYZ? That was such a good time!’”
Both Nævdal and Allen described themselves as nostalgic people. Nævdal said she enjoys looking back to old photos – especially when they show up as “On This Day” updates on her phone, She sends them to friends and family when their photos come up.
Allen wished that she documented more of her 2016 and younger years overall, to reflect on how much she has evolved and experienced since.
“I didn’t know what life could be,” she said of that time. “I would love to be able to capture my thought process and my feelings, just to know how much I have grown.”
