The air in London’s Old Billingsgate was thick with anticipation, but for David Salai, the night held a special personal tension. his narration, meatIt felt like “a rather risky novel,” he later admitted, a feeling that permeated everything from its stark prose to its overtly physical title. So when Roddy Doyle, the 1993 winner, took the stage to announce the winner of the 2025 Booker Prize, Salai was just another author in the crowd, hoping his gamble had paid off.
The announcement crowned Szalái, the Hungarian-British author, with the Nobel Prize for his sixth work of fiction, making him the first writer from his heritage to win this prestigious award. The win marks a triumphant return to the Booker shortlist for Szalay, who was previously nominated in 2016, and validates a novel born of creative uncertainty.
“Could a novel called ‘Meat’ win the Booker?”
In his country Acceptance lettera clearly affected Szalay immediately highlighted the sense of risk that defined the book’s journey. He recalled a conversation with his editor, Hannah Weston at Jonathan Cape, “and she was wondering out loud whether she could imagine a novel called Flesh winning the Booker Prize.”
“I felt like writing it was too risky for me,” he told the assembled crowd, his glass held tightly. “I think it’s very important that the publisher and the novel industry community embrace this sense of risk rather than avoiding it.”
The jury echoed this theme of perseverance throughout the evening. Committee chair Roddy Doyle, in his sarcastic speech, noted that the committee had read the six shortlisted books three times. “You read my books once,” he joked, drawing laughter. But he turned serious in describing the moment the committee found the winner: “There was one book we kept coming back to, one book in particular that made us all… sit up and smile.”
An ancestor who consumed years of his life
The path to the body was not clear. In a revealing moment after the ceremony, Salai told host Samira Ahmed that he began the novel right after he had abandoned another novel — an entire work of 80,000 to 100,000 words that had consumed years of his life.
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“It was not necessarily easy to write this book,” he admitted from the podium, dedicating his victory to his wife Ushuaia, “the only true witness” to his struggle. “I’m sure she’s as puzzled as I am by the fact that those bleak times and this sparkling evening are more or less part of the same process.”
Winner of the 2025 Booker Prize, Flesh is a propulsive and penetrating work that spans decades and geographies.
Make books fight
The judging process itself was a marathon of reading and reflection. Earlier in the evening, Justices Sarah Jessica Parker and Kelly Reed offered glimpses into their tough deliberations. Parker, who worked as a judge, described hiding chapters of books in her costume while filming the film, pulling them out “every time they said cut.” A former Booker Prize longlisted author, Reid revealed her unique method of making books “fight a little bit” by reading two competing titles in one-hour increments.
Plans to get the prize money?
For Szalai, the win is both a professional achievement and a practical satisfaction. In his first interview after the win, when asked about the £50,000 prize money, he said with a laugh that it would “keep the wolf a little away from the door”, although he did allow for the possibility of “a nice little holiday”.
As the ceremony concluded, Doyle gave the new winner some sage advice from one winner to another: “Say no to everything. Go home as quickly as you can, and lock the door.”
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But for David Salai, the door has opened wide. His novel—a perilous and profound exploration of a Hungarian man adrift in London—has been affirmed not just as a work of art, but as the definitive book of the year, proving that in literature, as in life, the greatest rewards often lie on the other side of risk.
(Tags for translation) David Szalay
