David Szalay in Conversation with Rita Bullwinkel
Man Booker Prize-winning author David Szalay discusses Flesh, his hypnotic novel exploring contemporary masculinity and the quiet pursuit of contentment.
Why we picked this
Zadie Smith called Flesh the novel that 'made the novel new' — Szalay writes about masculinity with a restraint and precision that contemporary fiction rarely achieves.
David Szalay’s fiction is concerned with men who don’t fully understand themselves — men at midlife, men in transit, men who have arrived somewhere they didn’t plan for and aren’t sure how to leave. His 2016 Booker-shortlisted “All That Man Is” announced him as one of the essential writers of his generation, building its portrait of contemporary masculinity from nine loosely linked episodes, each a different stage of life. “Flesh” extends that project with a single sustained narrative, following a man across years and relationships with a quietness that accumulates into something unsettling.
What distinguishes Szalay’s work is the gap between what his characters want and what they can articulate. He writes interiority without explanation, and the effect is less like reading a novel than watching someone try to hold something together in real time. Zadie Smith’s description — that “Flesh” made the novel new — points at something specific: Szalay is doing something structurally and emotionally that most literary fiction has stopped attempting.
In conversation with Rita Bullwinkel, herself a writer whose fiction operates in similarly compressed and precise registers, the evening promises to go somewhere more interesting than a standard author interview. City Arts & Lectures programs these conversations with care, and the pairing suggests a genuine exchange about craft.