(MENAFN- Live Mint) British writer David Szalay won the Booker Prize for fiction on Monday for“Flesh,” the story of one man's life from working-class origins in Hungary to mega-wealth in Britain, in which what isn't on the page is just as important as what is.

“Using only the sparest of prose, this hypnotically tense and compelling book becomes an astonishingly moving portrait of a man's life,” the Booker Prize judges said of their winning choice.

Szalay, 51, beat Kiran Desai's 'The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny' to take the coveted literary award, which brings a 50,000-pound ($66,000) payday and a big boost to the winner's sales and profile.

Desai missed out on becoming only the fifth double winner in Booker Prize's 56-year history, having won the coveted literary prize for fiction back in 2006 for 'The Inheritance of Loss'.

Other finalists included Andrew Miller of Britain.

Who is David Szalay?

David Szalay is a Canadian-Hungarian-British writer born in Montreal to a Hungarian father and a Canadian mother. He was raised in the UK and now lives in Vienna.

Szalay, author of six works of fiction, had previously been shortlisted for the prestigious literary honour in 2016 for his last work, "All That Man Is".

“All That Man Is” is a series of stories about nine wildly different men.

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