The novel’s protagonist is violent, libidinous and so inarticulate he says ‘OK’ some 500 times. So how did the author turn his story into a tragic masterpiece?
W
hen we meet the morning after the announcement of this year’s Booker prize, David Szalay, the winner, seems an extremely genial and gentle author to have created one of the most morally ambiguous characters in recent contemporary fiction. His sixth novel, Flesh, about the rise and fall of a Hungarian immigrant to the UK, is unlike anything you have read before.
Szalay (pronounced “Sol-oy”) is often described as “Hungarian-British”, but that has offended Canadians this morning, he says. His mother was Canadian and he was born in that country, where his Hungarian father had moved a few years earlier. “I’m arguably more Canadian than Hungarian.” Now 51, he grew up in England, graduated from Oxford University, and lived in Hungary for 15 years. To make things more confusing, he is over from Vienna, where he now lives with his wife and young son Jonathan.
For many years, Szalay has been critically acclaimed as “a writers’ writer”. In 2013 he was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. There was always a sense that he deserved to be better known. In the past 12 months, he has had a baby and won the Booker prize. “It’s not a year I’m gonna forget,” he says, his voice scratchy from lack of sleep and all the talking he’s already had to do this morning.
