British-Hungarian author David Szalay has won the Booker prize for fiction for his novel “Flesh”, a sweeping portrait of a Hungarian émigré who makes and loses a fortune in Britain.
The 51-year-old writer claimed the prize by defeating five other finalists to take the high-profile annual literary award. It comes with a 50,000-pound ($66,000, €57,000) prize and a big boost to the winner's sales and profile.
The novel follows the life of a working-class Hungarian man over decades who moves to Britain to make a fortune and escape poverty.
"I wanted to write a book with a Hungarian end and an English end, since I was living very much between the two countries at the time," Szalay said.
"Writing about a Hungarian immigrant at the time when Hungary joined the EU seemed like an obvious way to go. So it would be, to some extent, a novel about contemporary Europe and about the cultural and economic divides that characterise it," he said.
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The judging panel was chaired by the Irish writer and former Booker prize winner Roddy Doyle, "Sex and the City" star Sarah Jessica Parker and Nigerian author Ayobami Adebayo.
They said they had never read anything like this before, while admiring Szalay’s work on fiction. The panel statement said, "A meditation on class, power, intimacy, migration and masculinity, Flesh is a compelling portrait of one man and the formative experiences that can reverberate across a lifetime."
"We had never read anything quite like it. It is, in many ways, a dark book, but it is a joy to read," Roddy Doyle, who chaired the panel.” Born in Canada, Szalay spent his childhood in the United Kingdom and now lives in Vienna.
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