The Circumcision

Twelve-year-old Robi Singer and best friend Gabor Blum are the only boys in their class who have yet to be circumcised. Robi is worried.

What if the knife should slip? What will the others think in the showers? Will he find a wife? Is there plastic surgery to fix damage of this sort?

Should he have the circumcision? Everyone has an opinion—from his teachers to his eccentric grandmother and hypochondriac mother—the final decision is Robi’s.

György Dalos, born in Budapest in 1943, was arrested in 1968 for “activities against the state” and his work was banned for 19 years.