Booker Prize Winner David Szalay on Agency, Violence, and Restraint
About this episode
David Szalay discusses his Booker Prize-winning novel Flesh and its exploration of complex themes such as agency and violence.
An edited version of this conversation is now available as part of our collaboration with The Yale Review . Read it here: https://yalereview.org/article/shakespeare-and-company-interview-david-szalay This week Adam Biles sits down with Booker Prize–winner David Szalay to discuss his novel Flesh — a work that begins in post-Soviet Hungary and expands into a stark portrait of Europe over the last three decades. Szalay describes writing a book that takes almost nothing for granted, grounding experience in the physical body rather than psychology. They explore the novel’s emotionally charged yet morally unresolved relationships, its refusal of overt judgment, and its spare, withholding prose style. The conversation covers masculinity, violence, agency, and the seductive fantasy of “the West,” asking whether István is passive — or simply shaped by forces larger than himself. What happens when a novel resists explanation? When language reaches its limits? And how can restraint intensify emotional impact rather than diminish it? Buy Flesh: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/flesh-2 * Winner of the Booker Prize 2025 for Flesh. David Szalay was born in Canada, grew up in London…
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