Winner of the 2025 Booker Prize, David Szalay’s Flesh is a spare, hypnotic novel about the forces that shape a life. From a housing estate in Hungary to the world of London’s super-rich, it follows István across decades as sex, violence, chance, money and power propel him through a life he rarely seems able to control. At its centre is an almost palpable emptiness: a man profoundly unable to express his emotional life. Born in Canada and now based in Vienna, Szalay is one of the most distinctive novelists writing today. He joins TIFA to discuss masculinity, class and desire, and the question at the heart of Flesh: what makes a life worth living?