Flesh

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025**

'A masterpiece, told with virtuosic economy... Pure brilliance from the first to the (devastating) last sentence' India Knight 'Brilliance on every page' Samantha Harvey

'Spare, visceral, urgent, compelling. This book doesn't f**k around' Gary Stevenson

'So brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money' David Nicholls

Through chance, luck and choice, one man's life takes him from a modest apartment in Hungary to the elite society of London - in this captivating new novel about the forces that make and break our lives Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour - a married woman close to his mother's age - as his only companion. As these encounters shift into a clandestine relationship, István's life spirals out of control.

Years later, rising through the ranks from the army to the elite circles of London's super-rich, he navigates the twenty-first century's tides of money and power. Torn between love, intimacy, status, and wealth, his newfound riches threaten to undo him completely.