Mark Haddon

Mark Haddon (born 26 September 1962) is an English novelist, best known for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003). He won the Whitbread Award, the Dolly Gray Children's Literature Award, the Guardian Prize, and a Commonwealth Writers' Prize for his work.

In 2003, Haddon won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award—in the Novels rather than Children's Books category—for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. He also won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in the Best First Book category, as The Curious Incident was considered his first book written for adults.^[1] Despite being categorized as an adult book for some awards, Haddon also won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize in 2003 for the book.^[2] The book was furthermore long-listed for the 2003 Man Booker Prize,^[3] and became a long-running stage play.

The Curious Incident is written from the perspective of an autistic 15-year-old boy, Christopher John Francis Boone. In an interview at Powells.com, Haddon claimed that this was the first book that he wrote intentionally for an adult audience; he was surprised when his publisher suggested marketing it to both adult and child audiences (it has been very successful with adults and children alike).^[1] However, it has also received criticism from autistic readers for its 'depressing' depiction of Christopher, the autistic protagonist.^[4]

His short story "The Pier Falls" was longlisted for the 2015 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award, the richest prize in the world for a single short story.^[5] He published a collection of short stories inspired by classical mythology called Dogs and Monsters in 2024.^[6]

In 2023, he turned down an OBE for his services to literature, saying: 'I would feel uneasy accepting an honour which presumes an uncritical acceptance of the British Empire as a good thing.'^[7]

Haddon is a vegetarian. He describes himself as a "hard-line atheist".^[8][9] In 2019, a heart bypass followed by long COVID left him with brain fog that made him unable to read or write. He spoke to The Guardian in 2024 about his five-year-long process of partial recovery, saying that although he still could not read properly, the fog was "starting to thin a little".^[10]

Haddon lives in Oxford with his wife Sos Eltis, a Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, and their two sons.^[8]

• Gilbert's Gobstopper (1987)
• Toni and the Tomato Soup (1988)
• A Narrow Escape for Princess Sharon (1989)
• Agent Z Meets the Masked Crusader (1993)
• Titch Johnson, Almost World Champion (1993)
• Agent Z Goes Wild (1994)
  • At Home
  • At Playgroup
  • In the Garden
  • On Holiday
• Gridzbi Spudvetch! (1992)
• The Real Porky Philips (1994)
• Agent Z and the Penguin from Mars (1995)
• The Sea of Tranquility (1996)
• Secret Agent Handbook
• Agent Z and the Killer Bananas (2001)
• Ocean Star Express (2001)
• The Ice Bear's Cave (2002)
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003)
• Boom! (An improved version of Gridzbi Spudvetch) (2009)

• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003)
• A Spot of Bother (2006)
• The Red House (2012)
• The Pier Falls (2016)
• The Porpoise (2019)
• Social Distance (graphic short story, 2020)^[11]

• The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea 2007

• Polar Bears (2010)

• Official website
• Mark Haddon at British Council: Literature
• Mark Haddon at IMDb
• Mark Haddon discussed the rituals and processes that guides his work.
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (official)
• A Spot of Bother (official)
• Interview: Coming Down the Mountain
• Freeman, Hadley. "Novelist Mark Haddon talks to Hadley Freeman", The Guardian (London), 29 May 2006. Retrieved 31 May 2011.
• Haddon, Mark. "Writers' rooms: Mark Haddon", The Guardian (London), 29 June 2007. Retrieved 31 May 2011.