Mark Haddon

'Tender, transporting, creative and beautifully written ... Simply glorious, from start to finish' Rachel Clarke, author of Dear Life Simultaneously heart-breaking and darkly hilarious, Leaving Home is a portrait of the artist both as a child and as an adult. Mark Haddon's parents were not really cut out for the job of having children. They were cut out, respectively, for the jobs of designing abattoirs and keeping a pathologically clean and tidy house. At least Mark had the consolations of The Weetabix Solar System Wallchart, walnut whips and the occasional Babycham. Astringently honest and scalpel sharp, this is a book about being different and seeing the world differently. It’s about being a cartoonist and a care assistant. It’s about family. It’s about how art, in all its varied forms, provides a way of understanding and coming to terms with the mess of human life. And it’s richly illustrated throughout with images from the author’s childhood. As bracing as it is embracing, Leaving Home is about escaping a place that never felt like home and learning to create somewhere that does. 'I loved this funny, melancholy and arrestingly original memoir of an artist's coming into being' Sarah Perry, author of Enlightenment

'Tender, transporting, creative and beautifully written ... Simply glorious, from start to finish' Rachel Clarke, author of Dear LifeAs an artist and writer, Mark Haddon has always created vivid and unforgettable images. Now he takes his own life as raw material, writing about growing up in the cultural wastelands of the English Midlands of the 1960s and 70s.Simultaneously heart-breaking and hilarious, Leaving Home is portrait of the artist both as a child and as an adult.. His parents were not really cut out for the job of having children. They were cut out , respectively, for the jobs of designing abattoirs and keeping a pathologically clean and tidy house. At least he had the consolations of The Weetabix Solar System Wallchart, walnut whips and the occasional Babycham.Astringently honest and scalpel sharp, this is a book about being different and seeing the world differently. It’s about being a cartoonist and a care assistant. It’s about family. It’s about knickerbocker glories and heart surgery, about papier mâché and mental breakdown and great white sharks. It’s about how art, in all its varied forms, provides a way of understanding and coming to terms with the mess of human life.It’s richly illustrated throughout with images from the author’s childhood, some of them altered in unforgiveable ways.As bracing as it is embracing, Leaving Home is about escaping a place that never felt like home and learning to create somewhere that does.

Una combinaci n de humor y drama que solo el autor de El curioso del perro a medianoche pod a lograr. Pasen y conozcan a la familia Hall, un entra able clan al borde de un ataque de nervios. El padre, George, afronta la jubilaci n construyendo un estudio en su jard n y haciendo la vista gorda ante la aventura de su esposa, Jean. Ella encuentra cada vez m s complicado citarse con su amante ahora que su marido anda todo el d a en casa. Para colmo, el matrimonio ve c mo sus dos hijos, el inseguro Jamie y la temperamental Katie, se han emparejado de la peor forma posible: l con otro hombre, ella con alguien que simplemente no est a la altura. A medida que se acerca el d a de la boda de Katie, todos tendr n que enfrentarse a sus miedos para poner orden en sus atribuladas vidas. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION George Hall is an unobtrusive man. A little distant, perhaps, a little cautious, not at quite at ease with the emotional demands of fatherhood, or manly bonhomie. He does not understand the modern obsession with talking about everything. "The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely." Some things in life, however, cannot be ignored. At 61, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels and listening to a bit of light jazz. Then his tempestuous daughter, Katie, announces that she is getting re-married, to the deeply inappropriate Ray. Her family is not pleased - as her brother Jamie observes, Ray has "strangler's hands." Katie can't decide if she loves Ray, or loves the wonderful way he has with her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a bit put out by all the planning and arguing the wedding has occasioned, which get in the way of her quite fulfilling late-life affair with one of her husband's ex-colleagues. And the tidy and pleasant life Jamie has created crumbles when he fails to invite his lover, Tony, to the dreaded nuptials. Unnoticed in the uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip and quietly begins to lose his mind. The way these damaged people fall apart - and come together - as a family is the true subject of Haddon's disturbing yet amusing portrait of a dignified man trying to go insane politely. A SPOT OF BOTHER is Mark Haddon's unforgettable follow-up to the internationally beloved bestseller THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME. Here the madness - literally - of family life proves rich comic fodder for Haddon's crackling prose and bittersweet insights into misdirected love.

An unflinching, brilliantly written, darkly funny, lavishly illustrated memoir by the acclaimed author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time A ringing testament about how one artist sees the world, and how his experiences have shaped his vision Simultaneously heart-breaking and hilarious, Leaving Home is a portrait of the artist both as a child and as an adult. His parents were not really cut out for the job of having children. They were cut out, respectively, for the jobs of designing abattoirs and keeping a pathologically clean and tidy house. At least he had the consolations of The Weetabix Solar System Wallchart, walnut whips and the occasional Babycham. Astringently honest and scalpel sharp, this is a book about being different and seeing the world differently. It's about being a cartoonist and a care assistant. It's about family. It's about knickerbocker glories and heart surgery, about papier m ch and mental breakdown and great white sharks. It's about how art, in all its varied forms, provides a way of understanding and coming to terms with the mess of human life. It's richly illustrated throughout with images from the author's childhood, some of them altered in unforgiveable ways. As bracing as it is embracing, Leaving Home is about escaping a place that never felt like home and learning to create somewhere that does.

Una novela que no se parece a ninguna otra. Nominada por los estadounidenses como una de las 100 mejores novelas en la serie de PBS The Great American Read. Elogiada con entusiasmo por autores consagrados como Oliver Sacks e Ian McEwan y ganadora del Premio Whitbread y el Premio de la Commonwealth al Mejor Primer Libro, ha merecido la aprobaci n masiva de los lectores en todos los pa ses donde se ha publicado. Su protagonista, Christopher Boone, es uno de los m s originales que han surgido en el panorama de la narrativa internacional en los ltimos a os, y est destinado a convertirse en un h roe literario universal de la talla de Oliver Twist y Holden Caulfield. A sus quince a os, Christopher conoce las capitales de todos los pa ses del mundo, puede explicar la teor a de la relatividad y recitar los n meros primos hasta el 7.507, pero le cuesta relacionarse con otros seres humanos, Christopher es autista. Le gustan las listas, los esquemas y la verdad, pero odia el amarillo, el marr n y el contacto f sico. Si bien nunca ha ido solo m s all de la tienda de la esquina, la noche que el perro de una vecina aparece atravesado por un horc n, Christopher decide iniciar la b squeda del culpable. Emulando a su admirado Sherlock Holmes -el modelo de detective obsesionado con el an lisis de los hechos-, sus pesquisas lo llevar n a cuestionar el sentido com n de los adultos que lo rodean y a desvelar algunos secretos familiares que pondr n patas arriba su ordenado y seguro mundo. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION A bestselling modern classic--both poignant and funny--about a boy with autism who sets out to solve the murder of a neighbor's dog and discovers unexpected truths about himself and the world.Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow. This improbable story of Christopher's quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.

The bestselling author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time weaves ancient fables into fresh, unexpected forms and forges new unforgettable legends.'A marvel of a collection' Kaliane Bradley, author of The Ministry of Time‘A consummate storyteller’ New York TimesThe myth of the Minotaur in his labyrinth is turned into a wrenching parable of maternal love – and of the monstrosities of patriarchy.The lover of a goddess, Tithonus, is gifted eternal life but without eternal youth.Actaeon, changed into a stag after glimpsing the naked Diana and torn to pieces by his hunting dogs, becomes a visceral metaphor about how humans use and misuse animals.From genetic engineering to the eternal complications of family, Haddon showcases how we are subject to the same elemental forces that obsessed the Greeks, as he reimagines stories from Laika the Soviet space dog on her fateful orbit to St Anthony wrestling with loneliness in the desert.'In sentences as precisely cut as paper sculptures, Mark Haddon fits ancient myth to the cruelties and wonders of the present' Francis Spufford, author of Cahokia Jazz

From the "terrifyingly talented" (London Times) author of THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG-IN THE NIGHT-TIME and THE PORPOISE, eight mesmerizingly imaginative, deeply-humane stories that use Greek myths and contemporary dystopian narratives to examine mortality, moral choices and the many variants of love. Greek myths have fascinated people for millenia, seeing in them lessons about fate and hubris and the contingency of existence. Mark Haddon digs into the heart of these ancient fables and sees them anew. The dawn goddess Eos asked asks Zeus to give her lover Tithonus eternal life, but forgets to ask for eternal youth. In "The Quiet Limit of the World" Haddon imagines Tithonus' life as he slowly ages over thousands of years, turning the cautionary tale of tempting the gods into a spellbinding meditation on witnessing death from the outside, and ultimately, how carnal love evolves into something richer and more poignant with time. In "The Mother's Story," Haddon takes the myth of the minotaur in his labyrinth, in which the beast is the spawn of the monstrous lust of the king's wife Pasiphae, and turns it into a wrenching parable of maternal love for a damaged child, and the more real monstrosities of patriarchy. In "D.O.G.Z." the story of Actaeon, who was turned into a stag after glimpsing the naked goddess Diana and torn to pieces by his hunting dogs, becomes a visceral metaphor about the continuum of human and animal behavior. Other stories play with contemporary mythic tropes - genetic engineering, trying to escape the future, the viciousness of adolescent ostracism - to showcase how modern humans are subject to the same capriciousness that obsessed the Greeks. Haddon's tales cover a vast range, from the mythic to the domestic, from ancient Greece to the present day, from stories about love to stories about cruelty, from battlefields to bed and breakfasts, from dogs in space to doors between worlds, all of them bound together by a profound sympathy and an understanding of how human beings act and think and feel when pushed to the very edge. Throughout Haddon's supple prose showcases his astonishing powers of observation, of both the physical world and the workings of the psyche. His vision is clear-eyed, but always resolutely empathetic.

From the bestselling author of The Porpoise come eight mesmerising stories moving between Greek myth and the near future to explore what, ultimately, makes us humanWeaving together Ancient Greek fables with more recent dystopian narratives, Mark Haddon jump starts the heart of these legends told and retold for millennia, and demonstrates their lasting relevance again, in new and unexpected forms.The lover of a goddess, Tithonus is gifted eternal life, but without eternal youth he must stare into a future of endless old age. The myth of the Minotaur in his labyrinth is turned into a wrenching parable of maternal love for a damaged child - and of the more real monstrosities of patriarchy. Actaeon, changed into a stag after glimpsing the naked Diana and torn to pieces by his hunting dogs, becomes a visceral metaphor about how humans use and misuse animals.From genetic engineering to the eternal complications of family, from fear of the future to the cruel world of the English boarding school, Haddon showcases masterfully how we are subject to the same elemental forces that obsessed the Greeks. Whether describing Laika the Soviet space-dog on her fateful orbit, or St Anthony wrestling with loneliness in the desert, his astonishing powers of observation are at their height when illuminating the thin line between human and animal.

'A marvel of a collection' Kaliane Bradley, author of The Ministry of Time‘A consummate storyteller’ New York Times'There is nothing more terrifying than the monster that squats behind the door you dare not open...'The bestselling author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time weaves ancient fables into fresh, unexpected forms and forges new unforgettable legends.The myth of the Minotaur in his labyrinth is turned into a wrenching parable of maternal love – and of the monstrosities of patriarchy.The lover of a goddess, Tithonus, is gifted eternal life but without eternal youth.Actaeon, changed into a stag after glimpsing the naked Diana and torn to pieces by his hunting dogs, becomes a visceral metaphor about how humans use and misuse animals.From genetic engineering to the eternal complications of family, Haddon showcases how we are subject to the same elemental forces that obsessed the Greeks, as he reimagines stories from Laika the Soviet space dog on her fateful orbit to St Anthony wrestling with loneliness in the desert.'In sentences as precisely cut as paper sculptures, Mark Haddon fits ancient myth to the cruelties and wonders of the present' Francis Spufford, author of Cahokia Jazz

SOMETHING HAS FALLEN AWAY. We have lost a part of ourselves, our history, what we once were. That something, when we encounter it again, look it straight in the eyes, disgusts us, makes us retch. This is the horror of the abject. Following the success of Comma’s award-winning New Uncanny anthology, The New Abject invites leading authors to respond to two parallel theories of the abject – Julia Kristeva’s theory of the psychoanalytic, intimate abject, and Georges Bataille’s societal equivalent – with visceral stories of modern unease. As we become ever-more isolated by social media bubbles, or the demands for social distancing, our moral gag-reflex is increasingly sensitised, and our ability to tolerate difference, or ‘the other’, atrophies. Like all good horror writing, these stories remind us that exposure to what unsettles us, even in small doses, is always better than pretending it doesn’t exist. After all, we can never be wholly free of that which belongs to us.

Her favourite tales are those that conjure ancient worlds ââ?¬â?? of angry gods and heroic mortals, one of whom will some day come to her rescue. Soon, she will forget where the page ends and her mind begins. ââ?¬Ë?A full-throttle blast of storytelling masteryââ?¬â?¢ Max Porter

Den mystiske sag om hunden i natten er en usædvanlig mordgåde. Detektiv og fortæller er den 15-årige Christopher Boone, der bor alene med sin far og lider af Aspergers syndrom, en form for autisme. Han forstår ikke metaforer, ironi og ansigtsudtryk og hader berøringer og farverne brun og gul. Men han elsker matematik, logik, lister og sandheden. En dag finder han genboens hund myrdet og sætter sig for at finde gerningsmanden. Efterforskningen af mysteriet om den myrdede hund sender ham hovedkulds ud på en rejse gennem en verden, han ikke forstår. Og den fører til opklaringen af en hemmelighed, som vender op og ned på hans liv. En gribende og indfølt fortælling af en autistisk dreng og en medrivende kriminalroman, der gør det samme for naturvidenskaben som Sofies verden for filosofien. Pressen skriver: »Jeg er mildt sagt ret begejstret for bogen. Hele historien er en jeg-fortælling, og det lykkes forfatteren fænomenalt at beskrive Aspergers Syndrom set indefra. Det er pakket flot ind i Christophers jagt på at løse mysteriet om hunden, samt det drama Christopher selv bliver kastet ud i som konsekvens af mysteriet.« - bogboblen, Instagram »Den mystiske sag om hunden i natten, er også én af de bedste bøger jeg har læst i 2019, og helt klart noget, som jeg ville anbefale. Den handler ikke blot om autisme, men om det at være anderledes, alene og at vokse op i en verden, hvor man ikke er som alle andre, men alligevel at lykkes med at finde sin plads alligevel.« - Petro, Boggnasker

In these three tales of quarrelling clans and fraught reunions, Mark Haddon shows family in its frank, unsparing yet frequently absurd light, and, in doing so charts a stormy course into the crucible of the self. Selected from The Pier Falls, The Red House and A Spot of Bother. VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS.

Fifteen year old Christopher is about to embark on an investigation...Lots of things are mysteries. But that doesn't mean there isn't an answer to them.It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears' house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running on its side, the way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream. But the dog was not running or asleep. The dog was dead.This is Christopher's murder mystery story. There are also no lies in this story because Christopher can't tell lies. Christopher does not like strangers or the colours yellow or brown or being touched. On the other hand, he knows all the countries in the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7507. When Christopher decides to find out who killed the neighbour's dog, his mystery story becomes more complicated than he could have ever predicted.'Outstanding... a stunningly good read' Observer'A superb achievement. He is a wise and bleakly funny writer with rare gifts of empathy' Ian McEwan**ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY**

'An impressive line-up of established and emerging names' Sunday Times 'These eerie, unsettling stories are guaranteed to send shivers down your spine' Daily Express A rich collection of unnerving ghost stories and sinister histories conjured from the imaginations of bestselling authors: Mark Haddon, Jeanette Winterson, Andrew Michael Hurley, Sarah Perry, Stuart Evers, Kate Clanchy, Kamila Shamsie and Max Porter. From medieval castles to a Cold War nuclear bunker, locations are inspired by rumours of hauntings on English Heritage sites*. Let these immersive stories transport you to the past - the perfect book for the haunting season. *Also includes a gazetteer of EH properties which are said to be haunted.

Pools winner and total wazzock, Dennis Sidebottom has moved next door to Ben - bringing his squeaky-clean kids with him. Accused of being troublemakers and a bad influence, they decide to shake up the Sidebottom universe with the help of Agent Z, a meteorite and a stolen penguin.