And when the universe has finished exploding all the stars will slow down, like a ball that has been thrown into the air, and they will come to a halt and they will all begin to fall towards the centre of the universe again. And then there will be nothing to stop us seeing all the stars in the world because they will all be moving towards us, gradually faster and faster, and we will know that the world is going to end soon because when we look up into the sky at night there will be no darkness, just the blazing light of billions and billions of stars, all falling.

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.