For where a novel with a canine narrator can call upon almost bottomless reserves of wistful charm, light irony and easy humour to carry it along, one whose central character is an abused and neglected child cannot. So, in choosing to write about such a child – her dog-boy, Romochka, is not Ivan Mishukov, though he shares many characteristics with him – the prize-winning Australian author Eva Hornung opens up a Pandora's box, full of questions about our humanity, our dealings with other creatures and our sense of what is normal.īooks written from a dog's-eye view are not uncommon, but with Dog Boy Hornung sets herself a far more difficult challenge.

Eight-year-olds living in the street were almost invariably victims of all three.' Certainly, what had passed for normal in these children's pre-canine lives was far less nurturing, and significantly more dangerous, than life with the pack, a regime that offered the warmth, contact, unbreakable loyalty and intense sense of belonging that abused children so profoundly lack. It is tempting to agree with Dmitry, the educational psychologist who discovers the feral child in this fascinating and moving novel, when he remarks that the boy 'was better off living with dogs than with humans. Reports of feral children running with dogs or wolves are not new, though they seem to have reached unprecedented levels in Russia over the past decade or so. Here it was hoped that he would forget his old life and learn (as one report put it) 'normal human behaviour'. Eventually, however, Ivan was separated from the pack and treated for a time in a children's shelter before being returned to society.

During that time he had formed an astonishing bond with the animals, who had kept him warm through winters of up to -30C, and had fought, on several occasions, to protect him from the police when they sought to take the child into care. He was six years old and had been with the pack for two years, having been abandoned by his mother – or possibly having wandered away from the apartment she shared with an alcoholic boyfriend. I n the summer of 1998, a feral boy named Ivan Mishukov was discovered on the streets of Reutova, near Moscow, living with a pack of dogs.

Dogboy by Eva Hornung