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My Writing Life: David Szalay

David Szalay was born in Canada, grew up in London and now lives in Vienna. Last year his most recent book, Flesh, won The Booker Prize. This year’s Booker Prize winner is announced next week, on Monday 9 November.

1. What book should every writer read?

The Information by Martin Amis – it skewers writerly vanity and self-importance with merciless and hilarious precision.

2. What is your typical writing day like?

I’m not sure I have a typical writing day. Except that I probably do most of my best writing early, before dawn in winter, before even switching my phone on. I’m usually done by mid-morning.

3. Who has been an influential figure in your writing career?

I’d like to give some credit to Dan Franklin here – he gave me my first contract at Jonathan Cape. He took a risk. No one else was willing to do that at the time, and if he hadn’t done it, I’d most likely be doing something different now.

4. What is the one thing you wish someone had told you before you started your career as a professional writer?

When you think you’ve finished, you haven’t finished. Put it away and look at it again in three months.

5. What is the best advice you’ve ever received about your writing?

An eminent poet, having taken a look at some of my efforts, once tactfully dissuaded me from trying to write poetry.

6. What has been the proudest moment of your career so far?

I guess I have to say winning the Booker last year – it’s a pretty obvious answer, but there it is.

7. What are you reading right now?

The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley.

8. Bookmarker or page-folder?

Bookmark, definitely.

David Szalay was born in Canada in 1974, but his family moved to England soon after, where he grew up. He has written several works of fiction. His first novel London and the South-East was published in 2008; based largely on his experiences working in telephone sales, it won the Betty Trask Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award. He followed it in 2016 with All That Man Is, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Gordon Burn Prize. His most recent novel, Flesh, was published in March 2025 and won the Booker Prize that year. His work has been translated into about forty languages. After spending a decade living in Hungary – his father’s country of origin – he is now based in Vienna.

This article originally appeared on our Substack.

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