Everything you need to know about Flesh by David Szalay, winner of the Booker Prize 2025
As Flesh by David Szalay wins this year’s Booker Prize, here’s the lowdown on the winning book and its author
Founded in the UK in 1969, the Booker Prize is the world’s most significant award for a single work of fiction
Each year, the prize is awarded to what is, in the opinion of our judges, the best sustained work of fiction written in English and published in the UK and Ireland. The winning book is a work that not only speaks to our current times, but also one that will endure and join the pantheon of great literature.
The winner and the shortlisted authors are guaranteed a global readership and a life-changing increase in book sales. The winner of the Booker Prize also receives £50,000, with £2,500 awarded to each of the other shortlisted authors.
Flesh by David Szalay was named the winner of the Booker Prize 2025 at a ceremony in London on Monday, 10 November. Flesh was selected as the winning book by the 2025 judging panel, chaired by 1993 Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle, the first Booker Prize winner to chair a Booker judging panel. Doyle was joined by fellow judges Booker Prize-longlisted novelist Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀; award-winning actor, producer and publisher Sarah Jessica Parker; writer, broadcaster and literary critic Chris Power; and New York Times bestselling and Booker Prize-longlisted author Kiley Reid.
The judges considered 153 books and were looking for the best work of long-form fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between 1 October 2024 and 30 September 2025.
David Szalay, author of Flesh, attends the Booker Prize 2025 shortlist readings event at Southbank Centre in London
© David Parry for Booker Prize Foundation
The origins of the prize
The Booker Prize was first awarded in 1969. Its aim was to stimulate the reading and discussion of contemporary fiction.
The publishers Tom Maschler and Graham C Greene, who came up with the idea for the prize, found a backer in Booker McConnell, a conglomerate with a significant long-term presence in Guyana. The company had recently acquired a commercial interest in literary estates.
Ian Fleming, a good friend and golfing partner of Booker Chairman Jock Campbell, had died in 1964. Before he did, Campbell established an ‘authors’ division’ within Booker, and bought (for £100,000) a 51 per cent share in the profits from worldwide royalties on Fleming’s books. The Booker Authors’ Division would go on to acquire the copyrights of Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer and Harold Pinter, among others.
Thus a prize for writers and readers of the Commonwealth – not just Britain – was born. In 1969, the inaugural Booker Prize was awarded to P.H. Newby for his novel Something to Answer For. Thirty years later, Booker Chairman Michael Caine would write that ‘The Booker Prize can trace its origin, through quirks of history and the imaginativeness of one individual, to James Bond and the attainment of political freedom in Guyana’. (Guyana had gained independence in 1966.)
The life of the Booker Prize over the past half-century has exceeded the imaginings of its founders several times over. The BBC first televised the prize ceremony in 1976, and the level of conversation, competition and controversy increased exponentially in the years that followed.
In 2014, the prize was opened up to writers of any nationality, as long as their books were written in Engilsh and published in the UK or Ireland.
P.H. Newby, photographed in Cairo, Egypt
© Madame Hassia / Courtesy P.H. Newby Literary Estate
