David Szalay’s new novel, Flesh, shirks literary bombast the same way a horror film cuts at the exact moment the crazed murderer plunges his knife into a victim, forcing the audience to imagine the worst. The book opens in 1980s Hungary, as 15-year old István and his mother move to a new apartment complex in a new town. István struggles socially, and to pass the time, he takes his mother’s advice and helps his neighbor — a woman roughly his mother’s age — with her weekly trips to the supermarket. Soon, the neighbor begins performing sexual acts on a withdrawn István, a tryst commences, and István ends up in a confrontation with the woman’s ailing husband. During their scuffle, István pushes the husband, who falls down a stairwell, sparking the first of Flesh’s “knife plunge” moments. The husband dies, yet Szalay almost immediately shuttles the narrative forward in time, neither lingering on the violence nor its aftermath. Szalay, too, refuses to devote paragraphs to the trauma brought on by the man’s death, the neighbor’s multiple rapes of István, or István’s stay at a young offenders’ institution. By the reader’s next encounter with István, he has completed his sentence and is back on the streets.
Throughout Flesh, Szalay consciously leaves much of the melodrama and violence in István’s life off the page, and while not a horror story at all, Szalay employs this cutaway technique to offer the reader a series of narrative gaps, the kind of blank spaces where, as in a horror film, a mind wanders to the bleakest of possibilities to fill. Chapters focus on the actions and conversations that occur between and lead up to these shocks, places where years pass, fortunes change, and families grow and shrink. Along the way, Szalay digs equally into the carnal notions associated with the novel’s title and phrases that include the word — a pound of flesh, flesh and blood, press the flesh — resulting in a wise and haunting book that permits the reader to draw conclusions as it chronicles one man’s journey through the frequent trembles of life.
As a protagonist, István is putty waiting to be molded by his environment. He is implied to be handsome and physically strong, yet Szalay never provides much of a description. István speaks in clipped sentences, too, and his reliance on the word “okay” acts as a barometer for his level of comfort from chapter to chapter. As an introverted teen, “okay” is a shield, protecting István from emotional expression. “I’m okay,” he tells his grandmother when asked about his new home and school. “It’s okay,” he says to his neighbor when she apologizes for kissing him. Later, once István has finished his detention, joined the army, served in the Iraq war (another “knife plunge” kept off the page), and moved to England, “okay” becomes István’s way of avoiding long conversations in his new country, as well as in a new language. Walking home one night, István saves a member of the London elite from a mugging. When the man, Mervyn, asks for István’s phone number, István replies, “It’s okay,” the phrase now equivalent to a waved hand ending the interaction. Mervyn insists, though, and István relents. When the duo meets at Mervyn’s home some days later so he can thank István once more, they share an awkward exchange regarding István’s employment as a doorman at a strip club:
“Sure. It’s okay,” István says.
“Which place actually?”
István says the name of the place.
“Oh yes.”
“You know it?”
“Not really.”
“It’s okay,” István says again.
“I know of it,” the man says.
István has another sip of his drink.
Here, the melding of István’s reserved statements and his repetition of “It’s okay” illustrate his discomfort at carrying a conversation, as well as his attempts to shift gears or end the chat altogether. This unease continues as Mervyn sets István up as an employee at his private security business. Mervyn buys István a new suit and tells him to wear it every day for a week. “Okay,” István responds, which leads to:
“Sleep in it if you want to. You need to feel comfortable in it,” Mervyn says. “More important, you need to look like you feel comfortable in it.”
“Okay,” István says.
Like other “okay”s, István draws up the adverb to signal he understands what is being asked of him, even if he fails to fully grasp Mervyn’s ultimate objective. The word protects István from conjuring a true emotional expression, and through Mervyn’s guidance, István becomes the private driver for Karl Nyman, a millionaire. István drives around Karl’s much younger wife, Helen, and the couple’s son, Thomas, too. Helen takes a shine to István, but when she first tries to seduce him, István resists:
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“Don’t say that.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t say that,” she says again.
“Okay.”
“Take me home,” she says.
“Okay,” he says.
He drives her home in silence.
Once more, “okay” serves as István’s way of escaping conversation. Regardless, Helen and István sleep together. Their affair blossoms as cancer catches up with Karl, who succumbs to the disease between chapters: one more “knife plunge” left to the imagination. Szalay starts the next chapter many months later. István and Helen have married. István is stepfather to preteen Thomas, and Helen is visibly pregnant. Now living in the proverbial lap of luxury, István’s “okay”s are less ubiquitous. His comfort levels change, and on the occasions when the word does appear, it suggests a distracted or dismissive tone: when Helen recommends certain restaurants, István mindlessly replies “okay,” as if on autopilot.
Augmenting István’s use of “okay,” Szalay’s third-person narration utilizes a vernacular that echoes István’s outsider status. While dining with Mervyn, for instance, the narrator notes that Mervyn removes a wine bottle “from the thing it’s in and tops them both up.” Much later, as István watches one of Helen’s friends roll a joint, the narration refers to marijuana as “that stuff.” In another scene, when István schmoozes a minister in hopes of gaining political aid to launch a building project, István’s target is described as eating a “goat’s cheese whatever,” and István’s visit to a hospital room deep in the novel finds him noticing a patient’s ventilator is attached to “that transparent plastic thing” in their mouth.
By maintaining this consistent narration, the novel reinforces István’s position as an interloper within an ever-improving ecosystem. In fact, Szalay’s commitment to this one-two combo of close narration and dialogue tailored to István’s isolated, plebian personality is so convincing that Flesh’s one true flaw arises in scenes where the author excludes his protagonist. Without István, these pages turn superfluous, reinforcing information already strongly implied, or producing thin subplots, particularly between Thomas and Helen, that never fully pan out. Szalay’s careful rhythm runs aground, flailing until István makes his return. The narration flattens and loses its anchor.
Such imperfections are easily forgiven, however, when overall Flesh succeeds at such a high level. Szalay exploits his “knife plunge” technique brilliantly from cover to cover, eluding depictions of tough moments to ask the audience to substitute in their own assumptions. Yet about three-quarters of the way through the novel, the author crafts a sequence that suggests he may break this pattern. In it, István takes his now elementary-aged son, Jacob, on a quad bike ride around their property. During their first loop, they encounter a fallen tree branch, and István stops to avoid an accident. As he removes the debris, Szalay writes that István’s stride “feels like those dreams where you move too slowly to prevent some looming disaster.” Back on the quad, István and Jacob startle a group of starlings, come to another stop, and switch places, despite Jacob’s clear hesitancy to drive. Jacob slowly motors forward, and as he picks up speed, Szalay sets the table for a crash. Yet the boy and István end their day unscathed. This sequence is perfectly executed to trick the audience into believing in the potential of Szalay dismissing his established, sturdy structure. To borrow another trope from horror films, the sequence is the equivalent of the family cat jumping out of the darkness rather than the masked villain. It throws the audience for a loop, lowers defenses. In the case of Flesh, this means keeping the audience at arm’s length until tragedy strikes once more between chapters.
Commenting on fate, ambition, and personal value, David Szalay’s Flesh nevertheless startles with its many absences. In István, the author has fashioned a protagonist who ebbs and flows within a world that refuses to let life be easy. His is an existence where men end up where they began, where lows are guaranteed to follow highs, and where unresolved trauma worms its way through every page. In the end, Flesh is a shrewd novel that leverages the unsaid to speak volumes.
[Published by Scribner on April 1, 2025, 354 pages, $28.99 hardcover]