Should David Szalay’s Flesh have won the Booker Prize?

David Szalay’s “Flesh” is “almost certainly the most monosyllabic Booker prizewinner ever”, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Times . The brooding protagonist, István, largely speaks in “gruff, gruntish ‘yeahs’, ‘nos’ and ‘okays’”, giving the book the “terse narrative style of a thriller”.

It is also perhaps the “blokiest winner” in the literary award’s history, exploring masculinity in a way that will likely appeal to that “elusive creature, the 21st-century male reader of novels”.

‘Timely anxieties’

“ This year’s shortlist was a strong one”, said Martin Chilton in The Independent . Each of the “experienced” authors tackled the “theme of identity” in one way or another – but none managed it more “compellingly” than Szalay, whose “urgent and honest 349-page novel taps into timely