People say that you always have to tell the truth. But they do not mean this because you are not allowed to tell old people that they are old and you are not allowed to tell people if they smell funny or if a grown-up has made a fart. And you are not allowed to say, 'I don't like you,' unless that person has been horrible to you.

com Haddon claimed that this was the first book that he wrote intentionally for an adult audience; he was surprised when his publiMark Haddonr suggested marketing it to both adult and child audiences (it has been a great hit with adults and children alike). In 2003 Haddon won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and in 2004 the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Overall Best First Book for his novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time a book which is written from the perspective of a 15-year-old boy with Asperger syndrome. In 2009 he donated the short story "The Island" to Oxfam's 'Ox-Tales' project four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors.