David Szalay, whose novel Flesh won the Booker Prize, is visiting Australia ahead of appearances at the Melbourne and Sydney writers' festivals. The author discussed his nomadic life and the inspirations behind his award-winning book during a recent interview. Szalay's work traces the rootless journey of a Hungarian man amid themes of displacement and violence.
David Szalay, born in 1974 to a Canadian mother and Hungarian-Canadian father, has led a life marked by constant movement. His family relocated from Montreal to Beirut and then to London when he was a baby. In his 30s, Szalay left London for Brussels and later Hungary in 2009, where he met his German-born wife. Recently, the couple moved to Vienna, partly due to discomfort with Hungary's political climate under its government, Szalay said. He began writing Flesh while living in Hungary, drawing on his sense of being 'stretched' between cultures. 'I'd been living already in Hungary for quite a few years, but I didn’t feel entirely at home there,' Szalay explained, noting his limited fluency in Hungarian and growing distance from England. The novel follows István, a young Hungarian man from age 15 into his 40s, moving from Hungary to England. It opens with István's grooming and abusive relationship with a neighbor, leading to violence and stints in a juvenile facility and the Iraq war. Later, as a security guard in London, he enters the elite world after an affair with his employer's wife, Helen. Booker judging panel chair Roddy Doyle praised the book for focusing on a 'working-class man' and using 'white space on the page so well,' inviting readers to fill in the gaps. Szalay adopted a stripped-back, affectless prose style, honed from radio shorts for his prior novel Turbulence, to maximize emotional impact implicitly. 'Every word matters; the spaces between the words matter,' Doyle noted. Previous works include the 2016 Booker-shortlisted All That Man Is and 2018's Turbulence. Szalay plans festival appearances in Melbourne from May 7-10 and Sydney from May 17-24.
