Every January, Book Chamber chooses prize-winning fiction. 2025 Booker Prize winner Flesh, by David Szalay, follows a Hungarian protagonist as he moves into strange new worlds — through adolescence, the Iraq war, works menial jobs in London, and culminates in him marrying money. Big money. Join us for an engaging discussion on passivity, estrangement, and anomie, all wrapped up in a propelling, unexpected rags-to-riches story.

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The Booker prize committee recounts, "The judges discussed the six books on the shortlist for more than five hours. The book we kept coming back to, the one that stood out from the other great novels, was Flesh – because of its singularity. We had never read anything quite like it. It is, in many ways, a dark book but it is a joy to read."

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A British author with Hungarian heritage, David Szalay's books include Turbulence, London and the South-East, and All That Man Is. His novels have won and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and he has been awarded the Gordon Burn Prize and The Paris Review Plimpton Prize for Fiction. Born in Canada, he grew up in London, and now lives in Vienna.

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