Booker Prize 2025 Winner: David Szalay is the Hungarian-British author who won the prestigious 2025 Booker Prize for his profound and propulsive sixth novel, meat. His victory represents a milestone, as he is the first author of Hungarian heritage to win the award.
Here’s what you need to know about the famous author and his winning book:
Flesh begins with the story of a shy 15-year-old boy in Hungary. (Source: amazon.in)
Transatlantic background
Szalay’s personal history is as global as the scope of his novels. Born in Canada, raised primarily in London, he now lives in Vienna. This itinerant life has profoundly influenced his works, which often explore themes of displacement, identity, and the search for belonging across different cultures. His winning novel Flesh, which spans from a Hungarian residential area to the mansions of London’s elite, is a prime example of this transnational perspective.
The winning novel
meat It is a hypnotic novel that follows the life of the novel’s protagonist, István, who is “unraveled by a series of events beyond his control.” The story begins with a shy, isolated 15-year-old in Hungary, whose life is changed by a secret affair with his older, married neighbor – a relationship he barely understands but which sets his life on a destructive and inescapable path.
As the novel unfolds across decades, István navigates the “waves of money and power” of the twenty-first century. Moving from the army to the firm of London’s super-rich, his competing drives for love, intimacy, status, and wealth win him unimaginable fortunes until they threaten to undo him entirely. In masterful prose, Szalay asks profound questions about what drives life: what makes it worth living, and what ultimately breaks it.
In his acceptance speech, Salai revealed that the book seemed like a “risky” endeavor, from its intimate content to its frank title. The Booker jury, chaired by Roddy Doyle, praised the novel for its “absolute uniqueness.”
A critically acclaimed career
Winning the 2025 Booker Prize is the culmination of a continually celebrated career. Szalay is the author of six works of fiction that have been translated into more than 20 languages.
His literary career took off when his first novel, London and the Southeast, won the Betty Trask Prize and the Jeffrey Faber Memorial Prize. His critical reputation was enhanced by his inclusion in Granta’s prestigious list of “Best Young British Novelists” in 2013. His 2016 novel All That Man Is was a landmark, winning the Gordon Byrne Prize and earning him his first Booker Prize shortlist.
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A life-changing victory
With the Booker Prize win, announced on 10 November 2025, Szalay takes home £50,000 (Rs 58,000) and is guaranteed a global readership. The win validates a novel born of creative uncertainty. Szalay shared that he started writing meat After he abandoned another novel he had been working on for years.
David Szalay has not only joined the pantheon of great literature, he has secured his place as one of its most compelling contemporary contributors.
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(Marks for translation) David Salai
