The literary landscape has witnessed a significant shift as David Szalay's novel Flesh claimed the prestigious Booker Prize, marking a bold departure from the female-centred narratives that have dominated fiction for nearly a decade.
A New Direction for Literary Fiction
For almost ten years, novels exploring female interiority have reigned supreme in literary circles. Writers including Sally Rooney and Ottessa Moshfegh captured the intimate thoughts and experiences of young women with striking authenticity, perfectly aligning with the cultural momentum of the #MeToo movement. During this period, comparable literary examinations of young male characters became increasingly scarce.
The Booker Prize judges have now recognised a work that unapologetically centres masculine experience. Flesh, written by British-Hungarian author David Szalay, traces the life journey of István, a working-class Hungarian immigrant, from the late 1980s to contemporary times.
Radical Storytelling Approach
Szalay employs a narrative technique of radical exteriority, presenting István primarily through his actions - casual sexual encounters and moments of violence - rather than delving into his internal world. The character repeatedly uses simple responses like "Okay" and "yeah," while readers remain unaware of his appearance, thoughts, or emotional landscape. Often, István himself seems disconnected from his own feelings.
During his Booker acceptance speech, Szalay discussed the multiple risks he undertook with Flesh, encompassing formal, aesthetic and moral dimensions. The most significant challenge, he revealed, was writing about sex from an explicitly male viewpoint. The author noted that contemporary writers cannot approach this subject in the manner of previous generations' literary giants like Martin Amis, Norman Mailer or Philip Roth.
While novels exploring desire continue to flourish - Sally Rooney's work famously includes sexual themes, and Miranda July's All Fours examined midlife sexual awakening last year - many male writers have treated this territory as off-limits. Szalay demonstrates that this need not be the case.
Subverting Literary Traditions
Flesh replaces the swaggering machismo characteristic of earlier male authors with a carefully measured matter-of-factness. The novel cleverly reverses traditional dynamics by consistently positioning István as the objectified character, with power residing instead with various female figures he encounters.
The story opens with a deeply unsettling account of a teenage boy's seduction by an older woman, a scenario rarely explored in fiction. This narrative choice echoes Ian McEwan's 2022 novel Lessons, with both works examining how such early experiences of abuse, combined with historical forces, shape their protagonists' subsequent lives.
Addressing themes including migration, financial struggle and masculine identity, Flesh speaks directly to our current moment while simultaneously revealing that male identity crises predate contemporary "incel" culture. Through its accumulation of personal catastrophes and emotional detachment, the novel might initially appear as literary doomscrolling, with its concise paragraphs potentially catering to digitally fragmented attention spans.
Yet beneath its surface banality, Flesh operates on an epic scale. Szalay imbues his everyman protagonist with Homeric significance by confronting literature's most fundamental question: what does it mean to be human?
Contrasting Booker Winners
Last year's Booker winner, Samantha Harvey's Orbital, transported readers to the International Space Station, encouraging outward contemplation of our planet and cosmic smallness. Flesh directs attention inward, forcing readers to confront physical embodiment and consider, as The Guardian's review memorably phrased it, "what, if anything, it means to amble through time in a machine made of meat."
Where Orbital celebrates Earth with wondrous affection, Flesh conducts a merciless dissection of bodily existence. Both novels ultimately remind us of our shared humanity in its most sublime and ugliest manifestations, transcending gender divisions. Framing literature through authorial identity has its limitations - reading, after all, represents the temporary occupation of another's flesh.
