Romochka is four years old, abandoned by his family and left alone in a condemned building. Driven onto the Moscow streets by cold and hunger, he finds refuge with a pack of feral dogs and is suckled by their leader, Matushka, through the terrible winter. While struggling to survive with Matushka and the others he learns what it takes to be a dog in a loving clan. But Romochka is a boy, and the tension between his dog self and his boy self increases as he grows. Gradually he starts to explore the world of humans, unaware that the greatest danger of all could be from people, whether it be skinhead gangs, militzia, bomzh or a well-meaning scientist and his partner.

With an utterly unflinching voice and beautiful prose, Dog Boy is a novel about the outer perimeter of being human. An award-winning and bestselling author in her native Australia, with a scope that takes her to the Middle East and around the world, Eva Hornung has written a novel that will push boundaries and pull heartstrings all at once.