Editions

The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-time

The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-time

Fifteen-year-old Christopher has a photographic memory. He understands maths. He understands science. What he can't understand are other human beings.

When he finds his neighbour's dog, Wellington, lying dead on the lawn, he decides to track down the killer and write a murder mystery about it. But in doing so, he uncovers other mysteries that threaten to bring his whole world crashing down around him.

Reviews

  • "Haddon is to be congratulated for imagining a new kind of hero, for the humbling instruction this warm and often funny novel offers and for showing that the best lives are lived where difference is cherished"

    Carol Ann Duffy, Daily Telegraph

  • "The clash between Christopher's view of the world and the way it looks to the rest of us makes this an extraordinarily moving, often blackly funny read. It is hard to think of anyone who would not be moved and delighted by this book, so the decision to publish it simultaneously for older children and adults is certainly well-founded"

    Jill Slotover, Financial Times

  • "Brilliantly inventive, full of dazzling set-pieces, unbearably sad, yet also skilfully dodging any encounters with sentimentality, this isn't simply the most original novel I've read in years . . . It's also one of the best"

    The Times

  • "A stroke of genius, as the advantages of having a naive, literal-minded boy in the driving seat are manifold . . . We do learn what it might feel like to have Asperger's Syndrome"

    David Newnham, TES

  • "The book gave me that rare, greedy feeling of: this is so good I want to read it all at once but I mustn't or it will be over too soon"

    Kate Kellaway, Observer

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About the Author

Mark Haddon

Mark Haddon is a writer and artist. His bestselling novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, was published simultaneously by Jonathan Cape and David Fickling in 2003. It won seventeen literary prizes, including the Whitbread Award. In 2012, a stage adaptation by Simon Stephens was produced by the National Theatre and went on to win 7 Olivier Awards in 2013 and the 2015 Tony Award for Best Play. In 2005 his poetry collection, The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea, was published by Picador, and his play, Polar Bears, was produced by the Donmar Warehouse in 2010. His most recent novel, The Red House, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2012. The Pier Falls, a collection of short stories, was also published by Cape in 2016. To commemorate the centenary of the Hogarth Press he wrote and illustrated a short story that appeared alongside Virginia Woolf's first story for the press in Two Stories (Hogarth, 2017).

Mark Haddon

Related articles

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Podcasts

Mark Haddon with Katy Brand on the Penguin Podcast

12 February 2020
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Recommendations

7 unforgettable fathers in literature
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Competitions

Win a trip to see Pericles at the Globe and a night in London with Mark Haddon's The Porpoise

20 May 2019

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