Abandoned in a big city at the onset of winter, a hungry four-year-old boy named Romochka follows a stray dog to her lair. There in the rich smelly darkness, in the rub of hair, claws and teeth, he joins four puppies suckling at their mother’s teats. Dog Boy by Adelaide author Eva Hornung is Monique’s pick for the Amanda Blair Book Club. This novel is an example of vivid and original storytelling. It is so viscerally convincing, that it becomes not just new but definitive.

Dog Boy won the 2010 Prime Ministers Literary Award for Fiction.