David Szalay

David Szalay (/ˈsɒlɔɪ/; born 1974 in Montreal, Canada) is a Hungarian-English writer.^[1]

David Szalay
Born	1974 (age 50–51) Montreal, Canada
Occupation	Author
Alma mater	University of Oxford
Notable awards	Betty Trask Award Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize Gordon Burn Prize

Life

Szalay was born in Montreal in 1974 to a Canadian mother and a Hungarian father. His family then moved to Beirut. They were forced to leave Lebanon after the onset of the Lebanese Civil War. They then moved to London, where he attended Sussex House School.^[2][3] Szalay studied at the University of Oxford.^[4] After graduating, Szalay worked at various jobs in sales in London. He moved to Brussels, then to Pécs in Hungary to pursue his ambition of becoming a writer.^[3]

Career

Szalay has written a number of radio dramas for the BBC.^[4] His 2018 book of short stories Turbulence originated in a series of 15-minute programmes for BBC Radio 4. The twelve stories of Turbulence follow different people on flights around the world. It explores the globalization of family and friendship in the 21st century.^[5] He won the Betty Trask Award for his first novel, London and the South-East, along with the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Since then, he has written three other novels: Innocent (2009), Spring (2011), and Flesh (2025).

A linked collection of short stories, All That Man Is, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Gordon Burn Prize in 2016.^[6][7] The Spectator said that "nobody captures the super-sadness of modern Europe as well as Szalay."^[8] The Observer questioned its structure and whether or not it qualifies as a novel in the traditional sense: "does it in any sense work, as Jonathan Cape wants us to believe, as a novel? Yes, there's a thematic consistency that makes this more than a collection, and Szalay even throws in the odd narrative link (the 73-year-old, it transpires, is the 17-year-old's granddad). But still, a novel? I don’t think so."^[9]

Szalay was included in The Telegraph's 2010 list of the top 20 British writers under 40,^[10] as well as the 2013 edition of the Granta Best of Young British Novelists.^[11]

In 2025, Szalay's novel Flesh was longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize.^[12]

Personal life

Szalay lives in Budapest with his wife and two children.^[5]

Bibliography

The categorization of his books as novels or not has sparked some debate, particularly for All That Man Is^[9] and Turbulence.^[13] All That Man Is comprises nine distinct stories that weave a larger thematic picture. Turbulence is a collection of twelve loosely connected stories about different people with subtle appositeness undergirding the narrative progression. Flesh, while episodic, closer exemplifies a conventional novel centered on a single protagonist. This resembles the style of his earlier releases

Books

• London and the South-East (U.K. edition by Vintage Books, 2009; U.S. edition by Graywolf Press, 2017)
• The Innocent (Vintage, 2010)
• Spring (Graywolf Press, 2012)
• All That Man Is (Graywolf Press, 2016)
• Turbulence (Jonathan Cape, 2018)^[14]
• Flesh (Simon & Schuster, 2025)