{"id":39312,"date":"2025-09-23T20:06:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T20:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/39312\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T20:06:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T20:06:07","slug":"canadian-born-author-david-szalays-book-flesh-shortlisted-for-booker-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/39312\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian-born author David Szalay\u2019s book Flesh shortlisted for Booker Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

David Szalay’s book Flesh is about a Hungarian man who moves to London, climbs the social ladder and then watches his life unravel.Mike Coppola\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Canadian-born author David Szalay\u2019s book Flesh has made the short list for the 2025 Booker Prize, one of the world\u2019s top literary awards. <\/p>\n

Flesh was among six finalists for this year\u2019s prize, which is awarded to any book of fiction written in English and published in the U.K. or Ireland.<\/p>\n

The shortlisted books included three by American writers: Susan Choi for Flashlight, Audition by Katie Kitamura and Ben Markovits\u2019s The Rest of Our Lives. Indian author Kiran Desai\u2019s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny also made the short list along with The Land in Winter by British author Andrew Miller.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very afraid that we would pick books that I would consider boring because they were doing something that was above my head. These books are anything but boring. They\u2019re really exciting, and they have a lot of movement,\u201d said author Kiley Reid, who is among the five-member panel of judges chaired by past winner Roddy Doyle.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Szalay was born in Montreal in 1974 to a Canadian mother and a Hungarian father. The family moved to Beirut when Szalay was an infant, and then left for London a year later when the Lebanese civil war broke out. Szalay now lives in Hungary.<\/p>\n

Using sparse prose, Flesh tells a story of love and longing through the life of a Hungarian man who moves to London, climbs the social ladder and then watches his life unravel. The judges said it was a novel \u201cabout class ascension and a man who is remarkably detached from his desires, and a disquisition on the art of being alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

The finalists are all well-established authors and three have previously been shortlisted. Szalay made the short list in 2016 for All That Man Is. Miller was a finalist in 2001 for Oxygen and Desai won the prize in 2006 for her novel The Inheritance of Loss. If she wins this year, Desai will join Margaret Atwood<\/a>, Peter Carey, J.M. Coetzee and Hilary Mantel as two-time winners. <\/p>\n

David Szalay: Art is a form of communication between human beings. AI won\u2019t change that<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a case to be made for recognizing authors who\u2019ve been writing good books, but have never had the spotlight on them in the same way that being on the short list does,\u201d Doyle told reporters. <\/p>\n

The Booker Prize was founded in 1969, and it was initially open only to authors from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth. It was broadened to include Americans in 2014, which has caused some controversy since only Americans are eligible for U.S. prizes such as the Pulitzer and the National Book Award.<\/p>\n

Acclaimed actor and publisher Sarah Jessica Parker, who is one of the judges, said she understood the concern and felt that literary awards should be open to as many books as possible. <\/p>\n

Book Review: Maria Reva\u2019s satirical tour de force Endling fully deserves its Booker nomination<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI would love all literary awards and competitions to alert readers to great books, no matter where they\u2019re from and the story they\u2019re telling. I think we\u2019re all better every time we have an opportunity to be further away from what we know, further away from the familiar,\u201d she told a press conference on Tuesday. <\/p>\n

The judges considered 153 books and whittled that list down to 31 before announcing the long list of 13 in July. Among the novels on the long list was Endling by Canadian writer Maria Reva<\/a>, who was born in Ukraine and moved to Vancouver in her childhood. <\/p>\n

The Booker Prize winner will be announced on Nov. 10 in London. The winning author will receive \u00a350,000 (about $93,400). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: David Szalay’s book Flesh is about a Hungarian man who moves to London,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[2522,2511,2523,288,2476,2503,2524,289,2502,2516,2517,2513,2504,2501,113,835,93,246,2515,2509,2533,2505,2506,1523,61,60,2512,166,1529,2525,768,2528,2529,2531,2526,2530,2152,2527,2507,2519,2520,1650,2518,2153,2510,80,2521,2514,2508,268,2532],"class_list":["post-39312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-books","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-entertainment","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}