Flesh

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025**

'Brilliance on every page' Samantha Harvey
'Spare, visceral, urgent, compelling. This book doesn't f**k around' Gary Stevenson
So brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money' David Nicholls
How do I get out of a reading slump? This is the book to do that Rhianna Dhillon, BBC Radio 4

Through chance, luck and choice, one mans life takes him from a modest apartment in Hungary to the elite society of London in this captivating new novel about the forces that make and break our lives

Fifteen-year-old Istvn lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour a married woman close to his mothers age as his only companion. As these encounters shift into a clandestine relationship, Istvns life spirals out of control.

Years later, rising through the ranks from the army to the elite circles of London's super-rich, he navigates the twenty-first century's tides of money and power. Torn between love, intimacy, status, and wealth, his newfound riches threaten to undo him completely.

'A revelatory novel' Sunday Times

'So much searing insight into the way we live now' Observer

Refreshing, illuminating and trueFinancial Times

'Compelling and elegant, merciless and poignant' Tessa Hadley

Utterly engrossing and I read it all in a day 5* reader review

I was hooked and tried to read this book with any spare moment that I had' 5* reader review

A Best Book of 2025 in the Guardian, Observer, Financial Times, Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail