Booker-shortlisted for 2025, Flesh by David Szalay is told in a reporting style — part child, part authority — that sketches the world and leaves the reader to colour it in.
A fast, hard-hitting novel where emotion lands late and quietly, turning detachment into its own kind of intimacy.
Booker Prize shortlisted for 2025, Flesh is told in a reporting style — part child, part authority — that feels as though the narrator is sketching everything and leaving us to colour the rest in. The result is counter-intuitively engaging.
We invest in the protagonist quickly and root for him despite, or perhaps because of, his complexities. The plot moves fast and hits hard, especially in the transitions from one moment in time to another, when the reader is left momentarily catching up with the implied narrative.
These discoveries the reader makes feel like small starbursts, their implications landing with a weight absent from the characters’ apparent dissociation. It’s as though the story unfolds behind glass, its emotional beats deferred until the narrator recounts events in everyday detail. By the end the point is clear: European freedom of movement offered transformation, but it is something far more ordinary that delivers the twist.
