David Szalay Reads from His Novel, Flesh, Exploring a Tour of Duty in Iraq

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This month on the Service95 Book Club podcast, Dua is joined by award-winning author David Szalay to discuss his quietly powerful novel Flesh – selected as Dua’s Monthly Read for October. Told through a series of spare, intimate portraits, the novel captures moments of human vulnerability with a precision that feels deeply real. In a Service95 exclusive, David reads from a chapter set in Iraq, where the protagonist István and his fellow soldiers find themselves beside a hotel pool, suspended in the strange stillness of their return from war. There is no drama, no action – just silence, heat, and waiting. “The idea of the soldiers having this very boring journey back from Iraq at the end of…