AP
—
Canadian-Hungarian-British author David Szalay received the Booker Prize for fiction on Monday for “Flesh,” the story of an extraordinary man’s life over a number of a long time by which what isn’t on the web page is simply as essential as what’s.
Szalay, 51, beat 5 different finalists, together with favorites Andrew Miller and Kiran Desai, to take the coveted literary award, which brings a 50,000-pound ($66,000) payday and a giant enhance to the winner’s gross sales and profile.
He was chosen from 153 submitted novels by a judging panel that included Irish author Roddy Doyle and “Sex and the City” star Sarah Jessica Parker.
Doyle stated “Flesh” – a guide “about living, and the strangeness of living” – emerged because the judges’ unanimous selection after a five-hour assembly.
Szalay’s guide recounts the lifetime of taciturn István, from a teenage relationship with an older lady by means of time as a struggling immigrant in Britain to denizen of London excessive society. The creator has stated he wished to put in writing a couple of Hungarian immigrant, and “about life as a physical experience, about what it’s like to be a living body in the world.”
Accepting his trophy at London’s Old Billingsgate – a former fish market turned glitzy occasions venue – Szalay thanked the judges for rewarding his “risky” novel.
He recalled asking his editor “whether she could imagine a novel called ‘Flesh’ winning the Booker Prize.”
“You have your answer,” he stated.
Doyle, who chaired the judges, stated István belongs to a bunch neglected in fiction: a working-class man. He stated that since studying it, he seems extra intently when he walks previous bouncers standing within the doorways of Dublin pubs.
“I’m kind of giving him a second look, because I feel I might know him a bit better,” stated Doyle, whose humorous, poignant tales of working-class Dublin life received him the 1993 Booker Prize for “Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.”
“It presents us with a certain type of man that invites us to look behind the face.”
Szalay, who was born in Canada, raised within the UK and lives in Vienna, was beforehand a Booker finalist in 2016 for “All That Man Is,” a collection of tales about 9 wildly totally different males.
“Flesh” was praised by many critics however annoyed others with its refusal to fill within the gaps in István’s story – nice swathes of life, together with incarceration and wartime service in Iraq happen off the web page – and its stubbornly unexpressive central character, whose commonest comment is “Okay.”
“We loved the spareness of the writing,” Doyle stated. “We liked how a lot was revealed with out us being overly conscious that it was being revealed … Watching this man develop, age, and studying a lot about him – regardless of him, in a method.
“If the gaps were filled, it would be less of a book,” he stated.
Szalay was thought of an outsider for this 12 months’s prize however had been rising up bookmakers’ odds within the days earlier than Monday’s ceremony.
The front-runners in accordance with betting markets have been British author Miller for early-Nineteen Sixties home drama “The Land in Winter” and Indian creator Desai for globe-spanning saga “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny,” her first novel since “The Inheritance of Loss,” which received the Booker Prize in 2006.
The different finalists have been Susan Choi’s twisty household saga “Flashlight”; Katie Kitamura’s story of appearing and identification, “Audition”; and midlife-crisis street journey “The Rest of Our Lives” by Ben Markovits.
The Booker Prize was based in 1969 and has established a fame for reworking writers’ careers. Its winners have included Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Arundhati Roy, Margaret Atwood and Samantha Harvey, who took the 2024 prize for house station story “Orbital.”
This is a growing story and will likely be up to date.