{"id":11126,"date":"2026-02-13T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=11126"},"modified":"2026-02-12T21:51:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T02:51:26","slug":"flesh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/13\/flesh\/","title":{"rendered":"Flesh."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

David Szalay\u2019s Flesh<\/a><\/em> is an alienated novel about alienation: It keeps the reader at arm\u2019s length from its main character, Istv\u00e1n, a young Hungarian man with no apparent morality or values who acts on impulse for most of his life. The spartan prose, especially the dialogue, helps create an atmosphere of futility and disaffection, reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange<\/em>, but doesn\u2019t ask any questions of itself, neither its protagonist or its world, to explain his feelings or his actions in a meaningful way. It won the 2025 Booker Prize, beating out books by previous winner Kiran Desai as well as Susan Choi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we meet Istv\u00e1n, he\u2019s a 15-year-old living in a public housing project in Hungary who, after a friend tries to get him to lose his virginity with another girl they know, ends up groomed into a \u2018relationship\u2019 by an adult woman neighbor \u2013 although this is just statutory rape. This ends in violence that leads to Istv\u00e1n serving time in juvenile detention and then as a soldier in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which further hardens him; while there, he saw one of his close friends killed by an IED, later receiving an honor for his own efforts in the same incident. Upon his discharge, he moves to London, works in private security, and ends up in a relationship with the wife of his wealthy boss, leading to an elevation in his social status that he can\u2019t match with any change in his attitudes, language, or ultimately his behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life largely happens to Istv\u00e1n; he perseveres but has almost no initiative, and the most active thing he does \u2013 the crime that gets him sent to prison early in the book \u2013 is an accident. He almost fails upwards, going from someone who doesn\u2019t even know what sex is when the novel opens to someone who falls backwards into it by the time his boss\u2019s wife seduces him. The pervasive anomie throughout the novel provides some context, although Szalay seems to be telling us that the world is making men like Istv\u00e1n \u2013 the incel argument, although he is certainly not celibate \u2013 rather than making Istv\u00e1n responsible for at least some of his own actions. He\u2019s born poor, with fewer choices than someone born into more privilege, but he doesn\u2019t lack agency entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much of the praise for Flesh<\/em> has been for its ascetic prose, which does make the book a very quick read, while also preventing it from becoming leaden with its aimless protagonist and depressing plot. The sparseness is primarily in the dialogue; Istv\u00e1n is a man of few words, but none of the characters is especially garrulous. Szalay also creates paragraphs of a single sentence \u2013 \u201cThe news is disorienting,\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s already getting dark\u201d \u2013 that make the book a faster read, but also don\u2019t imprint anything on the mind. The words rolled off me, even when I sort of found some meaning in the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n