The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time [Paperback] Haddon, Mark

Product Description NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A 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. “Disorienting and reorienting the reader to devastating effect.... Suspenseful and harrowing.” —The New York Times Book Review 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. From The New Yorker The fifteen-year-old narrator of this ostensible murder mystery is even more emotionally remote than the typical crime-fiction shamus: he is autistic, prone to fall silent for weeks at a time and unable to imagine the interior lives of others. This might seem a serious handicap for a detective, but when Christopher stumbles on the dead body of his neighbor's poodle, impaled by a pitchfork, he decides to investigate. Christopher understands dogs, whose moods are as circumscribed as his own ("happy, sad, cross and concentrating"), but he's deaf to the nuances of people, and doesn't realize until too late that the clues point toward his own house and a more devastating mystery. This original and affecting novel is a triumph of empathy; whether describing Christopher's favorite dream (of a virus depopulating the planet) or his vision of the universe collapsing in a thunder of stars, the author makes his hero's severely limited world a thrilling place to be. Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker Review Named One of America’s best-loved novels: PBS’s The Great American Read “Gloriously eccentric and wonderfully intelligent.” —The Boston Globe “Moving. . . . Think of The Sound and the Fury crossed with The Catcher in the Ryeand one of Oliver Sacks’s real-life stories.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "This is an amazing novel. An amazing book." —The Dallas Morning News “A superb achievement. He is a wise and bleakly funny writer with rare gifts of empathy.” —Ian McEwan, author of Atonement “Brilliant. . . . Delightful. . . . Very moving, very plausible—and very funny.” —Oliver Sacks “Superb. . . . Bits of wisdom fairly leap off the page.” —Newsday “Disorienting and reorienting the reader to devastating effect. . . . As suspenseful and harrowing as anything in Conan Doyle.” —Jay McInerney, The New York Times Book Review “Extraordinarily moving, often blackly funny. . . . It is hard to think of anyone who would not be moved and delighted by this book.” —Financial Times, London "Both clever and observant." —The Washington Post “Full of whimsical surprises and tender humor.” —People “[Haddon] illuminates a core of suffering through the narrowly focused insights of a boy who hasn’t the words to describe emotional pain.” —New York Daily News "Outstanding. . . . A stunningly good read." —The Independent “Engrossing . . . flawlessly imagined and deeply affecting.” —Time Out New York “A remarkable book from a writer with very special talent.” —Fort Worth Star-Telegram “The Curious Incident is the rare book that repays reading twice in quick succession.” —Detroit Free Press "Heart-in-the-mouth stuff, terrifying and moving. Haddon is to be congratulated for imagining a new kind of hero." —The Daily Telegraph “This original and affecting novel is a triumph of empathy.” —The New Yorker “Haddon’s book illuminates the way one mind works so precisely, so humanely, that it reads like both an acutely observed case study and an artful exploration of a different ‘mystery’: the thoughts and feeling we share even with those very different from us.” —Entertainment Weekly “Mark Haddon’s portrayal of an emotionally disassociat