‘Brilliance on every page’ - Samantha Harvey, author of Orbital

‘Flesh is a wonderful novel – so brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money’ - David Nicholls, author of One Day

A progressive, mesmerizing novel about a man unraveling due to a series of events beyond his control. Fifteen-year-old Istvan lives with his mother in a quiet apartment building in Hungary. New to the city and shy, he is not familiar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbor - a married woman around his mother's age - as his only companion. These encounters develop into a secret relationship that Istvan struggles to understand, and his life soon spirals out of control.

As the years pass, the currents of money and power in the 21st century gradually sweep him up, transitioning from the army to the company of London's super-rich, with his own competing desires for love, intimacy, status, and wealth, earning at least imaginary riches until they begin to threaten to destroy him completely.

Sparse and penetrating, Flesh is the finest novel yet by a master of realism, posing profound questions about what drives a life: what makes it worth living, and what destroys it.

Selected as ‘Best Book of 2025’ by the Guardian, Observer, Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, and Daily Mail.

‘It has been a long time since a novel consumed me whole like this one... So many poignant observations on the way we live now’ - Observer

‘Alluring and elegant, unyielding and moving. David Szalay is an exceptional writer’ - Tessa Hadley

Pages: 368, Dimensions: 16x16cm