you mentioned it flesh The book did not initially have an intended title; It was just kind of a placeholder. Why did you keep this as the final title?
As you say, this was a working title, which I thought would probably be changed. In the end, (my editor and I) decided it was really the best title for the book. The fact that it came to me naturally is because that’s what the working title probably indicated. Initially, we thought it was a little drastic and making people uncomfortable – but ultimately we decided it was a good thing. It felt a bit unliterary, but now I think it’s definitely a good thing. There were other options – something like “A Life” was briefly considered, but felt weak. In German, it actually has a completely different title, which my German publisher chose. I don’t remember the exact German, but it means something like “that which cannot be said”. It comes from a different perspective in the book, but I think it’s a good title too.
The novel seems to suggest that the body is the one thing we truly own, and the one thing that most betrays us. Did you want to investigate this very paradox – the body as both home and prison?
Absolutely, and that’s actually a really nice way of putting it. The body defines who we are, I mean, we are our body. But as you say, it also imposes various kinds of limitations on us, complete limitations in fact. The word prison might be a bit extreme (laughs) but yes, I think that was an inspiring idea in the background of the writing process. Definitely.
The title makes us think of skin, desire, decay, hunger – but it’s also strangely impersonal, as if you’ve stripped the human being of his personality. Were you trying to write about the human animal rather than “man” as a social being?
Yes absolutely. The idea of man as an animal is quite prominent in the book in many ways. But it is also present in human society. I don’t think they are two completely different things. I mean, the nature of human society and the way it is constructed is, to some extent, a reflection of the animal nature of every human being. I see those two things as very closely related. That close relationship was also what I was trying to convey in the book. You mentioned impersonality; I think there is something. I wouldn’t say the book is anti-individualism, but it does feel like we are all the same person.
with flesh, Did you start out with the idea of writing “a novel about the body” or did Istvan come first as a character?
It’s hard to say for sure whether it was one or the other. I certainly started with the idea of writing about the body, or at least life as a physical experience. But it was very important for me to understand it through a character who was engaging and sympathetic to the reader, because it was a novel. So those two things grew up together.
The protagonist, Istvan, is often passive, drifting between forces greater than himself. How much did you struggle with (or enjoy) the stress of writing a main character who is, in many ways, a “puppet” of her circumstances rather than someone who is completely in control?
I mean, there was not much struggle in terms of working on the character and the novel. It was not so. The idea of writing about a man whose life is shaped by things over which he has no control was an idea from the beginning. I think our lives are pretty much like this. So, I wanted to write a book about him. There was no version of the book in which Istvan had more agency and then I had to suppress it.
The novel moves between several stages of Istvan’s life – adolescence, military service, his rise into the nobility, and so on. Did you have it mapped out from the beginning?
I had that rough idea in mind from the beginning, though obviously not in every detail. But I knew I wanted to write a book about his entire life, from childhood to old age. I actually had to cut several chapters from the middle stages of his life, so the flow changed but the basic outline was there – in my mind – clearly from the beginning.
Your prose in Flesh is tight and concise, with a lot left unsaid. How do you balance that restraint with providing enough “hooks” so that the reader remains invested in the plot and characters?
I think the reason I pared it down this way was partly because I had a clear understanding of what I wanted to convey with this book, which also meant I also had a clear understanding of what was necessary and what wasn’t. In terms of keeping the reader interested, for me it’s about following the principle of only writing about what interests me. You just hope that what interests you will also interest the reader. There was no very conscious process of deciding what to include and what to exclude.
Throughout Istvan’s life, opportunity, power structures, socio-economic forces, and physical fate feature extensively. To what extent do you see Flesh as a novel about agency?
As we discussed earlier, this is very important to my concept of the book. The list of things you just said was very accurate. It is entirely about socio-economic factors, political events and their effects on her own body’s limitations and desires. This book, as much as anything else, is about those forces and how lives are shaped by them. Life is not simply a matter of individual will and agency. Ignoring the big powers would be to present a false picture. But at the same time, that doesn’t mean the book supports the idea that we have no agency at all, and free will is an illusion. There are many moments in the book that show how free will is actually shaped by those larger forces.
Money, status, power – they do more than just the background, they actively shape Istvan’s trajectory. How do you see the interrelationship between materialism and capital in this novel?
I believe that the physical animal nature of people and the socio-economic structure of society are very closely linked. They are in some sense expressions of the other. I don’t know if there’s a world where that’s not the case. So, the parts of the book that deal with social status and power and money are, in a way, a continuation of the earlier parts of the book, where we explore the emotional and sexual power people have over each other.
Has writing this novel changed your perspective on the interplay between these two factors?
As I write the book, it may be refined somehow. But since it is a novel rather than an essay or a work of intellectual abstraction, this means that it cannot deal with the abstraction of these ideas as much as a fictional reality. I think now I can more easily see how these two factors work in real life. Well, at least a hypothetical real life one.
In an interview, you expressed your desire to move away from the idea of the mind trapped inside the body and to see humans as “thinking bodies.” flesh This seems to be the case – the psychology seems to be implied through action and structure rather than internal monologue. Would you say that you’re deliberately writing against traditional psychological fiction?
I don’t know whether I am intentionally writing against it or not. I obviously stand by what I said in that interview, but I believe it just depends on how I see things. It’s much more interesting to see things from that perspective. This feels more true to me.
When you write characters like Istvan – who live largely in the outside world – does it feel like a rebellion against your own internal life as a writer?
(laughs) That’s a great question. I have to say…yes!? I mean, I haven’t really thought about it that way. Being a writer mainly involves sitting quietly in a room and doing something that is invisible to an outsider. With this book, I wanted to write a story that was external and had characters who were seen in terms of their actions rather than their thoughts.
Which authors or books have influenced Flesh and your broader work in general?
I always find this very difficult to answer, because there are always so many things, people and actions that you are attracted to, both consciously and subconsciously. There is a book, which I don’t think is that well known, which had a very strong influence on this novel. it is called extreme shine By Katherine Foy. I got a chance to read it at an early stage of the work fleshThe way it works, the way it works, the presentation of it – it was quite impressive to me, This is a novel that doesn’t really have interiority, Internality is inherent, Apart from that one book, the French writer, Michel Houellebecq, has been very influential to my work, Virginia Woolf is not a name you would expect, but she has inspired me a lot as a writer,
Rutvik Bhandari is a freelance writer. He lives in Pune. He is a reader and content creator. You can find him talking about books on Instagram and YouTube (@themindlessmess).
