Alex Marshall in The Guardian:
When David Szalay’s novel “All That Man Is” was nominated for the 2016 Booker Prize, the author described the award ceremony as “a horrible experience.” He sat through a “very stressful” dinner, wondering whether his book would triumph, only for it to lose to Paul Beatty’s “The Sellout.” He later told The Guardian newspaper, “Only trauma imprints memories that clearly.”
On Monday night in London, Szalay sat through another Booker Prize dinner. But this time his latest novel, “Flesh,” won the prestigious literary award. The author Roddy Doyle, who chaired this year’s judging panel, called it a “singular” and “extraordinary” novel. “It’s just not like any other book,” Doyle told a news conference before Monday’s announcement about the novel, in which Istvan, a lonely Hungarian teenager, makes an unexpected rise to the height of British society. The sparseness of Szalay’s writing compels readers to “climb into the novel and be involved,” Doyle added.
More here.
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