All the money went and there was nothing to buy food with…So mothers and fathers tried to find things they could get rid of, things that ate, things that drank or things that needed to be kept warm…The dogs went first.
Ivan and the Dogs is based on the extraordinary true story of Ivan Mishukov, the sole protagonist and the life of this unique tale.
The book revolves around Ivan, a four-year-old boy who abandons his mother and an abusive father to face the vast and cruel streets of Moscow, where he finds that he has no choice but to follow a road he makes for himself. As he continues living on the street he finds that there are not many people who feel for the difficulties of others, but that most people actually harass the helpless for a selfish motive. He is not even allowed to sleep on the pavements because he has no money to pay rent.
Unaware of the greed that lurks in the hearts of men, he seeks refuge from a bunch of boys who are of the same age and could supposedly help him, but they kick him out because he is unable to pay any form of rent. Living upon the heaps of garbage for a few days with the occasional fearful gaze of a white dog, he gets lured to a Bombzi, a homeless drunk who offers him some food after a couple of days. Upon uncovering his motives he runs away and the white dog bites the man, helping them both to escape. After finding a place away from the streets, he breaks the food he got into two halves, offering the second part to the dog.
Slowly but gradually Ivan wins the trust and protection of the street dogs by being selfless and kind. Due to the great affection he soon builds up for the dogs, he experiences a fierce purity of thought, believing that humans are evil and can be found lying at every step they take, while on the other hand the world of animals is a pure one, with no place for lies.
With a steady flow of rhythms and lullabies, Hattie Noylar perplexes the reader, forcing them to become greatly involved in the young child’s story. Despite a basic happy ending to the story the play failed to impress me at the very end, when it abandoned all the basic plots points, simply ending at a point of Ivan’s life when he finds that his dogs are everlasting and he sees them in every thing he looks at.
I see my dogs, all of my dogs.
They are singing to me:
Vano, Strelka, Ruslan, Kugya and Belka
We’re down in the dark city and it’s very
Cold. Belka goes still and we all stand and wait. Suddenly she barks and we run, run into the wild, wild forest,
Into forever. Into now. And this is now.
Running and running with my dogs in the white falling snow
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Buy this book at Bloomsbury Publishing
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