Former Merton College student and Oxford writer Mark Haddon, is the favourite to win the prestigious Whitbread Prize for his children’s novel, ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.’ Haddon’s best-selling story has already won the Whitbread section prize for best novel.The book, which tells the tale of a fifteen-year-old mathematical genius with Asperger’s Syndrome, has also won him the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and the Book Trust Teenage Fiction Award. Though the novel was not shortlisted for the Booker Prize, bookmakers William Hill put Haddon at 2/1 to win the Whitbread Prize.Since graduating from Merton College in 1981, Haddon has worked in diverse fields: he has been a live-in carer for someone with Multiple Sclerosis, a cartoonist for The Guardian and Private Eye, and has won two BAFTAs for his television work. The Whitbread winner will be announced on January 27.
Archive: 0th week HT 2004
Curious favourite
