Hungarian-British writer David Szalay has won this year's Booker Prize for fiction with his novel Flesh, the story of an ordinary man's life over several decades.

Szalay, who was previously shortlisted in 2016 for All That Man Is, received STG50,000 ($A100,822) and a trophy, presented to him by last year's winner Samantha Harvey.

Written in spare prose, Flesh follows a man caught in a series of events beyond his control as it charts his rise from a housing estate in Hungary to the mansions of London's super-rich.

"A meditation on class, power, intimacy, migration and masculinity, Flesh is a compelling portrait of one man, and the formative experiences that can reverberate across a lifetime," organisers of the award ceremony in London said in a statement.

Flesh is Szalay's sixth work

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