The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Szalay, David. Flesh. Scribner, 2025.

The novel opens in the late 1990s with István, a 15-year-old boy who moves with his mother to a housing estate in a small Hungarian town. He is quiet, physically strong, and unsure of himself, more at ease in his body than in conversation. At school and around the estate he struggles to connect with other teenagers. His sense of isolation makes him receptive when a 42-year-old married neighbor begins to flirt with him and then draws him into a secret sexual relationship that he does not fully understand or control. When the woman’s husband discovers the affair, a confrontation in the stairwell ends with István shoving the older man, who falls and dies, an accident that the authorities nevertheless treat as his fault.

István is sent to a youth detention center, where he learns to survive in a harsh environment by relying on his physical toughness and emotional withdrawal. After his release he drifts through low-level work and petty crime in post-communist Hungary. He develops intense feelings for his older cousin Noémi, who lives a more cosmopolitan life and seems to embody the freedom he longs for. When she chooses a wealthier, older partner instead of him, István feels the sting of social class and concludes that money and status shape whose desires matter.

Seeking structure and escape, István enlists in the Hungarian army and serves in Iraq. He returns to Hungary with a medal and a reputation as a veteran, but he does not feel like a hero and has no clear plan for his future. He drinks, gambles, and takes work wherever he can find it, eventually becoming a bouncer at a seedy Budapest strip club.

One night outside the club, István intervenes when a wealthy British client named Mervyn is attacked on the street. Impressed by István’s composure and physical presence, Mervyn offers him a job with his London-based private security firm. István moves to England and begins to learn the codes of the global rich, from the suits he wears to the way he opens car doors and keeps silent about what he sees. Mervyn becomes a mentor who teaches him how to appear confident in spaces that would once have terrified him.

Through Mervyn, István meets the Nymans, a family with a vast fortune. He becomes the full-time driver and bodyguard for Helen Nyman, the much younger second wife of the family patriarch. Working for Helen brings him into constant proximity with the trappings of extreme wealth: townhouses in exclusive London neighborhoods, country estates, private jets, and restaurants where the prices are never mentioned. Helen is lonely inside this world, and she gradually begins to treat István as a confidant. Their relationship shifts from formally professional to emotionally charged, and they begin a clandestine affair even as Helen’s husband grows ill with cancer.

After the older Nyman dies, Helen and István marry. This union lifts István into the ranks of the super-rich. He becomes stepfather to Helen’s son Thomas, who resents him as an intruder and social climber, and later father to their young son Jacob. With access to family money, István invests in London property developments and enjoys a life of chauffeurs, nannies, and international travel that would once have been unimaginable. Yet he still feels like an outsider whose accent, education, and memories mark him as different from the people around him.

Tensions inside the family intensify as Thomas reaches adulthood. Thomas sees István as a threat to his inheritance and as a reminder of his father’s illness and death. At a public charity event, long-simmering hostility turns into a physical altercation when István attacks Thomas in front of donors and business contacts. The incident damages István’s reputation and gives Thomas an opening to limit his access to the Nyman fortune. Legal maneuvers and bad publicity combine to strip István of much of his wealth and influence.

The worst blow arrives in the form of personal tragedy. While István manages a collapsing business and a strained marriage, Helen drives with Jacob and crashes their car. Jacob dies in the accident, and Helen survives with catastrophic brain injuries that leave her in long-term care and unable to communicate. In the aftermath he retreats to the family’s rural estate, where he drinks heavily and lets his remaining projects decay.

Years later, István leaves England and returns to Hungary. He now lives in his late mother’s old apartment and works as a low-paid security guard at a secondhand car lot. He is still strong but moves more slowly, his life narrowed to work shifts, solitary meals, and occasional conversations with former acquaintances. A visit from Bori, an old girlfriend who once hoped to leave Hungary herself, reminds him how many paths his life might have taken. She tells him about the daughter she gave up for adoption and about her own modest compromises. After she leaves, István walks through the city, passing the same apartment blocks and shabby markets that framed his youth.

The novel ends with István alone again, living a life that resembles his beginnings but with the weight of his experiences pressing on him. His journey from poverty to extreme wealth and back has not given him redemption. Instead it leaves him with a hard-won awareness of how desire, class, and the body’s vulnerabilities shape a human life from the first impulsive choices to the quiet routines of middle age.