Books by David Szalay
“Flesh explores the ways power, money, and desire intertwine, and how loneliness can endure even amid apparent success. The writing is precise and unsentimental, yet it is brutally affecting and intimate. It can be read as study of class, aspiration, and the quiet compromises that shape people. One of the things that I find remarkable is its subtle exploration of how the marks left by youth can echo through an entire life.” Read more...
The Best Novels of 2025: The Booker Prize Shortlist
Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, Novelist
Interviews where books by David Szalay were recommended
Award-Winning Novels of 2025, recommended by Cal Flyn
What are the most highly acclaimed novels of the year? We asked Five Books deputy editor Cal Flyn to put together a summary of award-winning fiction of 2025—novels that won major literary prizes in the English-speaking world—as one answer to this impossible question.
The Best Novels of 2025: The Booker Prize Shortlist, recommended by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
We spoke to Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, the novelist and judge on this year’s Booker Prize panel, about their 2025 shortlist: a varied line-up of six novels, from a work of historical fiction set in a frozen rural England to an experimental ‘Rorschach blot’ of a novel told in two conflicting parts.
Booker Prize-Winning Novels
As we know that many of our readers like to work their way through the list of Booker-winners, we’ve compiled an overview the winning titles from the last two decades.
