Dog boy - Eva Hornung

Moscow: present day. A four-year-old boy stands shivering on the pavement outside his deserted apartment block. His mother has been missing for three days. Driven by hunger and loneliness, overlooked by passers-by, he follows a large, yellow dog to her lair under a derelict church on the outskirts of the city, and crosses an invisible threshold into another life.

During the long, icy winter and the seasons that follow, Romochka changes from a boy into something far wilder. Under the watchful gaze of his new dog-mother, he learns to see in the dark, eat anything the dogs find, attack enemies with tooth and claw, and understand the strict pack code. Then, when he begins to hunt with his dog-siblings in the city, he is drawn inexorably back into the world of human beings. It is only a matter of time before the authorities take an interest…

Eva Hornung's extraordinary tale of a latter-day Romulus in post-perestroika Russia is a devastating story of childhood and survival on the harsh edges of society, and an unsettling exploration of what it means to be human.