David Szalay (Julia Papp)

David Szalay, the Canadian-born, Vienna-based novelist, has been named the winner of the 2025 Booker Prize for his novel Flesh.

The winner of the £50,000 prize (worth about $92,300 Canadian) was announced at a ceremony in London on Nov. 10.

In naming the winner, jury chair Roddy Doyle — himself a former winner of the prize — said the novel stood out on a shortlist of great books.

“The book we kept coming back to, the one that stood out from the other great novels, was Flesh – because of its singularity,” Doyle said. “We had never read anything quite like it. It is, in many ways, a dark book but it is a joy to read.”

Published in Canada by McClelland & Stewart, Flesh follows the protagonist, István, from adolescence to old age.

“The writing is spare and that is its great strength,” Doyle wrote. “Every word matters; the spaces between the words matter. The book is about living, and the strangeness of living and, as we read, as we turn the pages, we’re glad we’re alive and reading – experiencing – this extraordinary, singular novel.”

Szalay was previously shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2016 for his linked collection of short stories All That Man Is.

The authors of the four other shortlisted works – Susan Choi, Kiran Desai, Katie Kitamura, Ben Markovits, and Andrew Miller – each receive £2,500, about $4,617.