Summary

Flesh opens with 15-year-old István and his mother moving to a new town in provincial Hungary. The apartment is small and plain, and his mother works long hours cleaning in wealthier people’s homes while he wanders the streets and stares down at the square from their balcony. At school he feels out of place, conscious of his cheap clothes and his mother’s low paid work. He spends much of his time drifting through the town on his own, smoking and watching other teenagers who seem more confident and at ease.

István’s loneliness turns into a restless curiosity about sex and adulthood. He becomes fixated on a girl from the other side of the railway tracks, a subtle social divide between neighborhoods. After tentative conversations, they take a walk together and sit near the fountain. When they finally kiss...