A couple of weeks ago, an eager audience watched Dua Lipa and David Szalay breathe life into his novel Flesh, as they recorded a live episode of the Service95 Book Club podcast at the New York Public Library, in partnership with Spotify. And you know we aren’t ones to gatekeep – so it’s now available for you to watch, too. (Scroll down for more.)
Throughout their conversation, the two explored David’s quietly devastating and deeply immersive novel – Dua’s Monthly Read For October – which follows the life of a man named István, which unfolds across continents, relationships and decades.
The book’s title alone – Flesh – sets the ton for the rest of the story. “It was literally the name of the file on my laptop when I was writing the book,” David tells Dua. “At that time, I didn’t really expect it to be the title of the finished book... It sounds a bit tawdry. Maybe it sounds almost vulgar.” And yet, as the writing progressed, the title stuck. “We couldn’t come up with anything that nailed the book quite like the word ‘flesh’ does,” David says. “It speaks to something in the book... life as a physical experience, life as being a body.”
Structurally, Flesh is written as a series of self-contained episodes, each one leaping forward in time. “I thought of each chapter as a kind of self-sufficient unit,” David explained. That form was both stylistic and practical: “It helped my imagination.”
Still, across these fragments, a broader pattern emerges. The first chapter, in which a 15-year-old István is seduced by a much older neighbour, sets in motion a troubling trajectory. “It was the first thing I wrote,” David says. “One of the things that most interested me was the way in which he goes from something like disgust to feeling he’s in love with her... and then that leads to this violent incident.” That early moment of imbalance and blurred power dynamics reverberates throughout the novel in different forms, as Dua and David explore throughout their conversation.
Despite István’s sometimes quiet demeanour, David resists the idea that his protagonist is passive. “There is a kind of passivity about him,” he says, “but I wouldn’t want to overemphasise it. The agency that he shows happens between the chapters.” These gaps between chapters – during which István moves cities, changes jobs, even signs up to fight in the Iraq War – are where much of his inner life and decisive action occur.
David also captures a strong sense of place, drawing from his own experience living between the UK and Hungary. “I really wanted a book that had some of it from Hungary, some of it from London,” he tells Dua. “In 2005, Hungary joined the European Union... There was an enormous movement of people from Hungary to the UK.” By embedding the novel in real-world events – from EU migration waves to the Iraq war and even the COVID-19 pandemic – David grounds István’s story in the global forces that shape individual lives. “I wanted to write the book about the way that these big events that nobody really controls affect all our lives.”
Realism, both emotional and textual, was key. “I wanted to write dialogue which reflected the way people actually speak,” David says. “It generates a humorous aspect, inevitably... because it’s so banal, but I think it contributes to the sense of realism.” That realism, in turn, deepens the emotional weight of the novel: “That’s what then generates the kind of emotional engagement... without which the book wouldn’t really work.”
Over time, István’s evolution becomes both subtle and profound. “He is both recognisably the same person at the end as he was at the beginning, and totally different in other ways,” David said. “He’s changed through the load of experience that he’s carrying... and I think that’s how life happens.”
Despite its bleakness – Flesh doesn’t shy away from loneliness, violence, or alienation – David ultimately hopes readers come away with a sense of something more: “The kind of beauty and preciousness of life, of being alive. I really hope that comes through.”
Watch Dua’s full interview with David Szalay here or listen to it as a podcast here.
There’s More – Delve Deeper Into Flesh With The Service95 Book Club...
BOOKMARK the novels that inspire David Szalay’s writing
DISCOVER what to read next from the author’s back catalogue
LISTEN to David’s writing playlist to soundtrack your reading of Flesh
