Hungary, a former Communist country in Eastern Europe, can be particularly proud of this year’s Nobel Prize and the Booker. While László Karsznahorkai, this year’s winner for the Nobel Prize in literature, is a writer from Hungary, David Szalay, the 2025 Booker Prize winner, is a Canadian-Hungarian writer. Szalay’s father emigrated from Hungary. Apart from that, there is nothing in common between them. Both writers belong to two generations and their narrative styles are also completely different. Karsznahorkai is a postmodernist writer whose experimental narrative style of writing has a modernist lineage. Szalay demonstrates the nature of realist writing in his writing. Karsznahorkai’s style is complicated, while Szalay’s is a simple narrative style. The chemistry of storytelling is different in both of their writings. While Karsznahorkai’s writing confronts the experimentalism of modernity with its dense structure resembling that of mythology and folk narratives, Szalay’s follows the style of western realist representation.
The story of FleshSzalay’s Booker winner, is told in a linear mode with no quirks and turns. It follows the old realist pattern of beginning, middle and end. Like 19th century realist novels, thematically, it represents the social mores of its age, which is the late 20th century and early 21st century. It does not detest flesh from a religious point of view nor idealize it from a sexual political perspective. The flesh is erotic; it eroticises the characters in the novel and as well as its readers. There are a few lengthy descriptions of erotic exchanges. Though the protagonist of the novel is part of this erotic encounter, he is a reluctant sexualist.
The novel begins in the Communist 80s of Hungary where as a boy named Istvan he starts living with his mother in a residential estate. In his not-so-throbbing adolescence, he befriends a married middle-aged woman in the neighborhood who seeks his help in shopping. Soon they get more involved and spend time in her apartment and she gets attracted to him. She politely asks him whether she can kiss him on his lips to which he agrees with a bit of hesitation. This builds up. Each time the woman makes sure that she is not disturbing him and they both do sex with each agreeing to it. One day, she refuses and tells him that it has ended. She is bitter and feels angry towards her husband. In a by chance encounter, Istvan pushes him from the stairs. He falls and dies. Istvan is charged with murder.
In the next part, Istvan, released from the borstal school, is enlisted in the army for waging war in Iraq. He is then released from the army and he dates a few women before leaving for his home country. In the free dating with women, the fleshiness returns to him. But he is no romantic nor is he an operator, by his own admission. What is Istvan? He is no protagonist either with clear plans or secret desires. It is mere coincidences that take him forward and so also the narrative. It just moves forward. Back in Hungary, he gets a job but he soon migrates to London to take up a job as a driver. In 21st century London he meets Mervyn, again a chance encounter. It is through Mervyn, he meets Karl Nyman, He becomes the chauffeur for Nyman. In one of his trips Helen, Nyman’s wife also joins with whom he starts a relationship. It is rather she who starts a relationship with Istvan.
There is nothing exceptional in what ensues. They both get closer and closer. Nyman dies. Helen’s and Nyman’s son Thomas inherits his father’s property. But till his adulthood this is under a trust, one of the custodians being Helen. Meanwhile, Helen marries Istvan and they have a child. Their relationship of flesh becomes very sparse. They are mostly involved in discussing family affairs. Istvan utilizes the trust fund for developing properties. In cliched terms, one can call it a rags to riches story. But that is too superficial. He gets rich, which is true. However, there are no determined operations to defraud the trust fund and accumulate money. He has to confront Thomas who is well aware of his inheritance. As in one of the determining instances of his teenage years, Istvan incidentally attacks Thomas and fatally wounds him. Now, Istvan has his family to worry about. In another fatal accident, his wife and son died.
He returns to his country with his mother and finds a new job. He doesn’t express any desire for sex but his coincidental encounters with flesh continues. Istvan keeps an emotional distance from his fleshy encounters as if this there is a certain coldness in him that dissipates his passion for love and longing as though he is reluctant to both of these emotions. He once fathoms the broken relationship of his body and mind, comparing it with his teenage son. However, this thought doesn’t distract him nor grips him. The oddity of his personality is his melancholic solitariness. The most used word in the conversations between most of the characters is okay. Each intonation of it emotes a feeling of dispassion.
Interestingly, some of the novels short-listed for this year’s Booker prize share this particular trait of exploring solitariness as an awareness of the body. Is extreme loneliness an irascible response to the fleshiness of obscene virtual powers?
Damodar Prasad is an independent media researcher and Malayalam writer. The views expressed are personal
