British Style Mingles With Hungarian Thought In Booker Winner Davis Szalay’s Works

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): It is not a joke. Life is not a joke – David Szalay, All That Man Is

The year, which has entered the middle of November, belongs to Hungary, as far as literary awards are concerned. Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai has won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the Booker Prize has gone to David Szalay, who was born to a Canadian mother and a Hungarian father.

Szalay, pronounced ‘Solo-y,’ now a British citizen, was born in Montreal, Canada. The Booker committee gave the award to Szalay’s novel, Flesh, which outlines the portrait of a young Hungarian man. The novel scripts masculinity, migration, class struggle, power, and intimacy.

But Szalay being called a British author has offended many Canadians. He says he is more Canadian than British. Yet, he has grown up in England and graduated from Oxford University. Now, he is living in Vienna with his wife and son, and in that way, he is a world citizen, as all authors are.

‘Flesh’ paints the life of a shy 15-year-old boy, István, who lives with his mother in an isolated apartment in Hungary. Because the protagonist of the story is new to the city, he has yet to learn the school manners. Being lonely, he soon befriends a married woman, his neighbour, close to his mother’s age. Their friendship soon turns into a clandestine relationship, and his life goes out of control.

As the days roll by, the lure of lucre and power attracts him. He moves from the army to the company of London’s super-rich and stumbles on intimacy, status, and riches, and sticks to them until they completely undo him. But Flesh leaves many things unsaid, and a reader needs to understand it.

Szalay has been called a writer of writers for many years. His Hungarian thought mingles with British and Canadian style, which makes Szalay what he is.

In 2013, when he had just entered the world of literature, he earned the title of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. He was shortlisted for the Booker Award for his All That Man Is in 2016. It consists of short stories about men of different ages. The book kicked up a row over whether it should be called a novel because the stories are tightly linked to each other.

A novel, or a short story, as the critics may call it, All That Man Is, established him as an author. And he did not stop. Flesh was born from the failure of a novel that he had been trying his hand at for four years. The pressure of attention that he received after All That Man Is may have forced him to outrival his peers in the world of literature to work on Flesh.

Szalay intended to write a novel that connects Hungary and England to express his feelings that expressively retain the culture of two countries. At the core of each word that he pens lies the physicality of existence, the nucleus of life.  

Another novel, The Innocent, explores the workings of a police state, and the protagonist of the narrative, Aleksandr, a major in the MGB, forerunner of the KGB, creates a system that requires self-censorship. Aleksandr opts for such a system to survive. The novel, which highlights a tyrannical government that abuses power for its benefits, depicts the former USSR as a monstrous dictatorship in the backdrop of 1948 world politics. There are flashes of George Orwell’s 1984 in The Innocent. The protagonist of the story, a communist, is disenchanted with the regime’s style of working.

When the readers sift through the pages of the novel, they get slightly nervous, but such edginess leads them to finish the book. But The Innocent is not for fast reading. It moves circularly and takes a reader to the beginning of the narrative at the end. But Flesh is podgy. It provides more meat to the readers of Szalay.