<b>'A revelatory novel'</b> <i>Sunday Times</i><br> <br> <b>'Brilliance on every page'</b> Samantha Harvey, author of <i>Orbital</i><br> <br> <b>A propulsive, hypnotic novel about a man who is unravelled by a series of events beyond his grasp.</b><br> <br> Fifteen-year-old Istvan lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour - a married woman close to his mother's age - as his only companion. These encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that Istvan himself can barely understand, and his life soon spirals out of control.<br> <br> As the years pass, he is carried gradually upwards on the twenty-first century's tides of money and power, moving from the army to the company of London's super-rich, with his own competing impulses for love, intimacy, status and wealth winning him unimaginable riches, until they threaten to undo him completely.<br> <br> Spare and penetrating, <i>Flesh</i> is the finest novel yet by a master of realism, asking profound questions about what drives a life- what makes it worth living, and what breaks it.<br> <br> <b>Chosen as a 'Best Book of 2025' by the <i>Guardian</i>, <i>Observer</i>, <i>Financial Times</i>, <i>Daily Telegraph</i> and <i>Daily Mail</i><br> <br> '<i>Flesh</i> is a wonderful novel - so brilliant and wise on chance, love, sex, money'</b> David Nicholls, author of <i>One Day</i><br> <br> <b>'It's been a long time since I've been swallowed whole by a novel the way I was by this one ... So much searing insight into the way we live now'</b> <i>Observer</i><br> <br> <b>'Compelling and elegant, merciless and poignant. David Szalay is an extraordinary writer</b><b>'</b> Tessa Hadley