Not since the heyday of Martin Amis, David Storey or even Alan Sillitoe has literary fiction made space for this kind of protagonist.
István is not an unreliable narrator, nor a tragic intellectual. He is, quite simply, a body in motion: gruff, often silent, reactive rather than reflective. He says "OK" more than 500 times in the novel, and yet it's one of the most eloquent character studies in recent memory.
So what does this win say about literary trends? And are we witnessing a revival of the so-called "blokey novel"?
The return of the male body
Szalay has said he wanted to write about "the physicality of existence", a theme surprisingly rare in modern fiction. In an era obsessed with psychology, identity and memory, Flesh is refreshingly concerned with the flesh itself. István's life is defined not by what he thinks, but by what happens to his body: sex, violence, labour, injury, hunger, desire.
And yet this is no cheap, visceral spectacle. Szalay handles these themes with rigour. There is an economy of language, a sparseness, that elevates Flesh into something closer to tragic minimalism than lad-lit. One critic compared it to Greek tragedy. They weren’t wrong. István is not a hero. He is fate’s punching bag.
Blokey, but not retro
Yes, Flesh is blokey, but not in a nostalgic, macho-romantic sense. This is not a celebration of brute masculinity. István is often passive, emotionally detached, a vessel for the desires and manipulations of others. He is not described physically, yet women are drawn to him. He rarely speaks, yet the novel crackles with tension. The book invites us to examine closely what masculinity means when stripped of its usual performative markers.
This is masculinity as vulnerability. A life navigated through force, survival, sex and silence. And in that sense, Flesh joins a very different tradition: one that includes Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, The Damned United, and Unknown Soldiers. Stories where being a man means being under siege.
Literature's blind spot
For years, the male body, particularly that of the non-elite, non-neurotic, and non-verbal male, has been conspicuously absent in literary fiction. The genre has leaned inward: self-analysis, trauma, domestic detail. What Szalay does is remind us that exteriority can be just as revealing. That silence can be a character. That a life of movement, of doing rather than thinking, is no less rich.
And perhaps this is where Flesh really hits a nerve. It reaches a readership often excluded by modern fiction: men who don’t see themselves in autofiction or the literary middle classes. Szalay has said he wanted to create something "compressed", something that works with short attention spans without sacrificing depth. He may have cracked it.
Is this a trend?
Possibly. With Flesh winning the Booker, publishers may start taking more chances on novels that centre on men like István. Not anti-heroes, not deadbeats with ironic interior monologues, just men whose stories move through space, labour, class and flesh. Already we see glimmers: Ben Markovits, David Peace, even the earlier works of Jonathan Coe.
But let’s not mistake this for a resurgence of masculinity as dominance. The new blokey novel is not chest-thumping. It’s suspicious of power, wary of certainty, and deeply interested in what happens when men are out of their depth. Szalay hasn’t brought back the alpha male; he’s resurrected the fallible one.
And it's worth mentioning two other novelists who map masculinity from distinct angles. Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting did more than give voice to Scottish heroin culture. It captured male bravado and despair in pure dialect and grit. It's anarchic and sweaty, where Flesh is spare and watchful, but they share a commitment to portraying men unfiltered. Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain is something else again: a tender, bruising portrait of boyhood, addiction and maternal love. It approaches masculinity from the inside out—its silence is emotional, its violence often social. Both novels underscore the point that working-class masculinity in fiction need not be uniform, but it must be unflinching.
Further reading: a (blokey) book list
If Flesh got under your skin, here are ten novels that might deepen the cut and explore some of the same ground, and will certainly make a collection:
1. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe
A classic angry young man novel that captures postwar working-class masculinity in all its brash energy.
2. The Damned United, by David Peace
A feverish, obsessive portrait of football, ego and breakdown, with a uniquely masculine rhythm.
3. Unknown Soldiers by Väinö Linna
War stripped of nobility, showing male camaraderie, fear and futility in cold realism.
4. The Human Stain by Philip Roth
A middle-aged academic skewered by modern identity politics, exploring shame, sex and silence.
5. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
A heartbroken man’s inner soundtrack, revealing the boyishness behind adult male inertia.
6. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
I've written about this book. I love it. Two cowboys on one last journey, testing friendship, grit and what it means to grow old.
7. Submission by Michel Houellebecq
A bitter satire on male malaise and political shift, where resignation becomes seduction.
8. The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis
A gloriously egotistical coming-of-age novel, all lust, intellect and self-sabotage. And if you want more on Amis, I wrote about him here (his style, beauty and satire).
9. One Fat Englishman by Kingsley Amis
Middle-aged self-loathing meets sharp wit as an Englishman drinks, leers and insults his way through America.
10. Restoration by Rose Tremain
A bawdy romp through Restoration England, where male vanity and vulnerability walk hand in hand.
Szalay’s Flesh may be an outlier. Or it may be a turning point. Either way, it has reminded us that fiction need not be afraid of the physical, the wordless, the awkwardly male. That to read about a man who doesn’t explain himself is not a flaw, but a provocation.
And perhaps the real risk Flesh takes is not in what it says about masculinity, but in what it doesn’t.
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