Mark Haddon

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

Life, work and studies

Haddon and a sister grew up in Northampton with parents who, he said, "did not feel, or would not show, any love or affection". His father was an architect. He had "happy childhood memories" of staying with grandparents in Brighton. Haddon wrote a fragmentary memoir of his early life, Leaving Home, after suffering 'brain fog' from long Covid. It was adapted as a stage play and had a long and successful run. It is second to War Horse as the National Theatre's most profitable production. It has been criticised by some autistic readers, who objected to its 'depressing' depiction of Christopher, the autistic protagonist.

Haddon's short story The Pier Falls was long-listed for the 2015 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award, the richest prize in the world for a single short story. His novel The Porpoise, "a multi-layered re-imagining of Shakespeare's 'Pericles', He was invited to contribute to an anthology of "very short stories inspired by postcards" for Redstone Press and, from "a stack of old postcards", wrote eleven vignettes.

Personal life Haddon is a vegetarian. He described himself as a "hard-line atheist". He has "long been plagued by anxiety and depression". In 2019, he had triple heart bypass surgery. Later he contracted COVID-19 and, as he recovered, was diagnosed with long COVID. He has struggled with long Covid "brain fog" that left him unable to read or write. In 2024 he spoke to The Guardian 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".

Haddon lives in Oxford in an "art and book-filled Victorian house" Dogs and Monsters (2024) Leaving Home: A Memoir in Full Colour (2026)

Poetry The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea (2005)

Play Polar Bears (2010)