Szalay’s experiment with passivity escalates in Flesh, as its protagonist, István, is the ultimate passenger. Helpless to resist the carnal desires of his post-pubescent body, his life is shaped by a series of sexual and violent acts so ostensibly unconscious they might have been committed by someone else, as he acknowledges: ‘You and your body are not entirely identical.’ István’s relationship with his flesh is the defining connection of his life, but other people hold tremendous sway over him. Introduced as a teenager maturing in Hungary, the affectless István immediately engages in two sexual encounters. In the first, he is rejected by a girl his age because of his lack of libido, while in the other a neighbouring ‘lady’ exploits his sexual naïveté. When István, feverishly jealous, throws the neighbour’s husband down a staircase, he externalises his role in the fatal accident, passing it off as it as an accident.

Turbulence’s existentialism is a diluted generalisation of Szalay’s earlier collection All That Man Is (2016), which catalogues identity turmoil among European men. The latter is an intricate construction of disappointment and mundanity. Collated according to the age of the protagonists – first as an idealising teenager, last an ailing septuagenarian – these accounts of masculine disorientation underline the exhausting toll of failings and dissembling. We see a contrast between ego and action, no more so than in Murray, who considers himself a ‘winner of the world’ despite his frequent humiliations. James, a diligent property developer, reminds himself obsessively that ‘life is not a joke’ while his hard work fails to pay off. Few authors create men as Szalay does, exposing their pride and obsessive aspirations, even their sexual callousness.

Having earned Szalay a Man Booker Prize 2016 shortlisting for his interrogation of lost men, Szalay delves even deeper here with Flesh, this time with a single protagonist, one said to ‘exemplify a primitive form of masculinity’. Carnal consequences, the crux of the novel, lurk as we observe István over the decades. His history of incarceration constrains his prospects as a young man, though he soon forgoes one dangerous occupation for another. Restless, depressed, he migrates to the United Kingdom – yet another transnational Szalay character – and finds work in private security, which opens doors to exotic demographics and opportunities.

Szalay told the Guardian that his aim was to depict the contemporary experience of a male body with total honesty, a dangerous goal applied deftly not just to violent and sexual acts, but thoughts. István’s frank observations seem authentic for a masculine mind conditioned by modern media. István compares the ‘weird nipples’ of his neighbour to those in pornography, and admires the confidence of a woman baring her ‘unfortunate, saggy pair’ of breasts. He largely withholds judgement, presenting facts with a stark detachment. Szalay’s most honest character is Bernard from All That Man Is, an awkward Frenchman holidaying in Cyprus, who obsesses over the weight of two women he sleeps with, ignoring a greater taboo: they are mother and daughter. István is more palatable for a whole novel. If people like him appeared more in contemporary literature, treated with compassion, not derision, young men might turn less to influencers promising answers and more to books that ask deeper questions.

Whereas characters in the two collections are preoccupied with minor details, István is rarely introspective. He emerges through dialogue, the narrative’s lifeblood. István converses like a laconic child, describing his homeland, his lover, even witnessing the death of his friend in combat, all as ‘okay’. As others adopt his terse manner, a mood of anxiety and melancholy is evoked. Paragraphs last less than a single line; entire pages fly by without a sophisticated sentence. The sparse prose complements the character, but Szalay’s surrender of his vivid imagery feels pitiful. In a previous book, he describes London at night as a ‘maze marvellously unpeopled’, but the city is reduced to unelaborated references in Flesh: just ‘Tottenham Court Road’ and ‘Battersea Park’.

Flesh is Szalay’s first publication in the form of a novel since he became internationally famous, with traces of his recent work throughout. Like a short story collection, there is an episodic structure of ten chapters, consistently paced. Initially, each one introduces fresh characters and troubles, often leaping years, until events become increasingly interwoven. The elliptical composition omits many important moments of István’s life and his reactions to them, the curtain falling prematurely in those events we do see, but, all told, Flesh is a quietly harrowing novel. For a character so inwardly silent and verbally restrained, the cumulative toll of István trailing his body through life presses heavily on us, until we too feel at its mercy.