The Booker goes blokey: what David Szalay's Flesh tells us about masculinity in fiction

David Szalay's Flesh is many things: stark, relentless, deeply bodily. But above all, it may be the most blokey Booker winner we've ever seen. With its monosyllabic protagonist István, a Hungarian immigrant who becomes a strip-club bouncer, chauffeur, and then a mysteriously wealthy man, Szalay has brought back something long missing from the literary stage: the unvarnished, working-class male.

Not since the heyday of Martin Amis, David Storey or even Alan Sillitoe has literary fiction made space for this kind of protagonist. 

The literary comeback of 2025: Why everyone's quoting Sontag again

It started, as these things often do, on Instagram. A scan of Susan Sontag's notebook in Helvetica type, posted by an aesthetic account better known for café shots and Proustian lighting. "Love words, agonise over sentences," it read. It had 112,000 likes.

In a year where cultural discourse seems more fragile than ever, Sontag's voice cuts through. Aphoristic, self-possessed, and unafraid to court complexity, she's re-entered the conversation not just as a thinker, but as a kind of literary style icon. 

Why we’re in love with literary angst

From tear-in-the-rain heartbreak to existential quiet, bleaker classics are finding a new, eager audience.

Remember when reading heavy meant dragging yourself through dense tomes? Nowadays, bleakness has become chic. The recent surge in interest around titles such as White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali is showing us something more profound about why readers gravitate toward literary angst.

The rise of the hyper-niche book club

From "sad girl autumn" to "cosy fantasy without war," readers are forming ultra-specific clubs that speak to identity, mood and emotional resonance.

Remember when book clubs were just about gathering around the latest must-read novel with a glass of wine in hand? That version still exists (and thrives), but something stranger and more specific has quietly been gaining ground: the hyper-niche book club. 

When pop stars read serious books: what book clubs mean now

Once upon a time, the book club was a quiet affair. A circle of friends, a bottle of wine, and a novel discussed with enthusiasm or polite disagreement. Then came Oprah, and everything changed. Her televised picks turned literary taste into a shared national ritual, making authors overnight sensations and cementing the idea that reading could be collective, not solitary. 

But today’s book club looks very different. When Dua Lipa recommends This House of Grief to her 90 million followers, or Florence Welch posts her annotated copy of The Bell Jar, something deeper is at play. Reading has become performance, identity, and, unexpectedly, power.

Why are we still waiting for J.D. Salinger?

I was a teenager when I first read The Catcher in the Rye, and I remember thinking, quite seriously, that I wanted to be a writer, not in some abstract, romantic way, but with a kind of visceral clarity that made me look at books differently from then on. 

Holden Caulfield's voice felt like it had kicked the door open. It was messy, alive, and full of feeling. It didn’t sound like a book was supposed to sound, and that was precisely the point.

Do writers need social media? Richard Osman thinks not. Here’s why that’s a problem

Richard Osman recently sat down with Guardian journalist Marina Hyde and offered a tidbit that has rippled across social media (or all places): writers, he said, don’t need to be on social media. 

It wasn't even a casual comment. It was something he had thought about. On the surface, it might sound comforting for those of us bone-tired of the algorithmic hamster wheel we have found ourselves on. But it’s also, frankly, bad advice for most writers trying to carve out a space in today’s publishing world.

The literary echo chamber: Are we reading in circles?

I love a good book recommendation. Who doesn’t? But lately, I’ve started to wonder: are we all reading the same five novels, over and over again?

Log on to BookTok and you’ll find Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing, Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses, and Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo passed around like holy scripture. 

Over on Bookstagram, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow or Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library are often perched artfully next to a flat white and some autumnal leaves. If you’re deep into literary fiction, chances are someone has handed you Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You, Elif Batuman’s The Idiot, or the ever-expanding crop of novels compared to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History.

Shakespeare and Company: Why Paris’s most famous bookshop still feels like a pilgrimage

A century after it first opened, Shakespeare and Company remains more than a bookshop; it’s a living testament to the power of words, memory, and belonging. 
There are bookshops that sell books, and then there’s Shakespeare and Company. Each time I visit, as I did again recently, I’m

reminded that this isn’t merely a shop. It’s a symbol. It’s about history, the writers, and the romance of Paris.

The rise of the fanon canon: when fan fiction influences original fiction

It was once a guilty secret: some writers honed their skills on fan fiction, sharing stories in the corners of the internet before stepping into the world of publishing. 

Now, fan fiction isn’t a detour en route to “real” literature; it’s a workshop, a movement, and a testing ground for the next generation of writers. The fanon canon, as it’s called online, is transforming how stories are written, shared, and sold.

Minor works, major joy: Why we should read authors’ lesser-known texts

Not every literary treasure announces itself with a full-page review or a Booker Prize shortlist. Some arrive quietly, tucked into the back of collected editions or discovered decades after their author’s death.

These are the misfit texts: the ghost stories, experimental fragments, and one-off essays that never quite made it into the canon but hold a strange power all their own. They’re small, sometimes imperfect, but full of clues. In them, we catch glimpses of writers unguarded, playful, or restless, working things out before the world was watching.

Dark Academia, Deconstructed: beyond the aesthetic

Tweed blazers. Ancient libraries. A murder among the privileged. Dark academia has become a cultural moodboard, spilling across TikTok, Instagram, and bookshop displays. 

It’s all candlelit study sessions, whispered debates about Greek tragedy, and the intoxicating smell of old money and old books. But what happens when we look past the velvet curtains? Is dark academia simply an aesthetic, or does it say something sharper about literature, class, and longing?