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Story by Jack Foley
A MURDER mystery involving an autistic teenager has won its author
the £25,000 Whitbread Book of the Year award, announced
recently.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time has
earned its author, Mark Haddon, rave reviews, and was a popular
best-seller in the run-up to Christmas.
It tells the tale of a 15-year-old-boy, who suffers from Asperger's
syndrome, a form of autism, who investigates the death of his
neighbour's dog, which has been killed with a garden fork.
The judges said that it had ‘used disability to throw a
light upon the world’, adding that ‘we can think of
few readers who could no take no pleasure from this wonderful
novel’.
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Haddon, himself, said he was thrilled with the unexpected accolade,
and said that the publicity surrounding the novel, which also
won the Whitbread Best Novel category, had ‘completely taken
over his life’.
After celebrating properly, and doing some interviews, he intends
to retreat to a secret location to begin work on his follow-up.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time beat competitors
such as DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little, which claimed last year's
Man Booker prize. It is a black comedy about a High School massacre
in Texas.
Other contenders for this year’s highly sought-after £25,000
Whitbread award were DJ Taylor, Don Paterson and David Almond.
Taylor won the biography category, for Orwell: The Life, while
Paterson claimed the poetry award for Landing Light. Almond's
The Fire-Eaters, about a boy growing up in a seaside community,
near Newcastle, at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, won the
children's book honour.
A record 468 people entered this year’s Whitbread competition
- 111 of which were children's books.
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