‘Flesh’ by David Szalay     (2025) – 353 pages

Ever since I read ‘All That Man Is’ in 2016, I have been keenly interested in the career of writer David Szalay. I read a couple of his earlier novels, waiting for his next big one that I was confident he would produce. Now ‘Flesh’ has arrived.

‘Flesh’ begins with the fifteen year old Istvan living with his mother in an apartment in Hungary. A neighbor lady, forty-two years old, initiates a sexual affair with the boy. Later in a confrontation with the lady’s husband, he is suspected of pushing the husband down the stairs causing her husband’s death. He spends time in a young offenders institution.

This is the first of many twists and turns in Istvan’s life. Later he volunteers for the army in the hopes of redeeming his reputation. He is sent to Iraq where he winds up with a good conduct medal.

After the army, he has an instance of self-sabotaging behavior punching a door and severely hurting his hand. Then he goes to London where he first works the door of a strip club. He then saves the life of a man who is the owner of a security agency who hires Istvan as a guard and driver based on his military experience. The meteoric rise of Istvan begins. He spends a lot of his time driving the owner’s wife around.

There are angles here about physical sexual attraction that are not at all sentimental. That is probably why the novel is called ‘Flesh’. It’s his flesh that he can’t escape, that brings him back to the human.

‘Flesh’ captures a life: the good things, the really good things, the not-so-good things, the bad things, the wonderful things, the terrible things. It is all there, this man’s life in plain unadorned language. I’m impressed. This causes me to reflect on my own life which has also contained all these things.

So much of the success and failure in this man’s life is just happenstance. Things happen. Isn’t that true for most of us?

Most writers tend to tip the scales in favor of their main protagonist or protagonists. However the writer David Szalay strives for complete objectivity rather than subjectivity. He is meticulous in describing events and doesn’t take sides. He doesn’t assign blame or praise, just states the facts of each situation even if they cause his main character to look bad. This is a refreshing somewhat unique approach to writing fiction.

‘Flesh’ is the novel I have been waiting for from this writer.

Grade:    A