Mark Haddon's book starts with a dog found speared on a lawn with a garden fork. "As I started writing this I realised it was quite funny," the author told BBC Oxford. BBC NEWS |  | |
This touch of black humour is worth mentioning, because critics latch on to the fact that the central figure in The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time has Asperger's Syndrome, the behavioural disorder. This is true, but it doesn't make it sound terrifically entertaining. Haddon's been enjoying the mass of plaudits (and sales) his book has received, but he has some regrets about the disorder bit. "It's about a young boy who has some behavioural issues. The word Asperger's never appears in the book at all. "It appears on the cover and I think if I could turn back time I might try to have it taken off the cover completely. "I didn't set out to write a book about someone with a disability. READ MORE |  | |
"He has what we call a disability, but by the end of the book it's all the characters around him you think have the real disabilities." Haddon said he had been "floating on air" since the book became a success. "I thought I would be lucky if a couple of hundred people were interested in reading it." He said he couldn't remember the exact number of books he'd written without going to the shelves at his east Oxford home to count them. He also writes screenplays: including one for the BBC adaptation of Fungus The Bogeyman, for transmission in spring 2004. He's won two BAFTA awards for his scripts. | 
