Mark Haddon

Haddon won the 2003 Whitbread Book of the Year Award and Commonwealth Writers' Prize Overall Best First Book for his novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which was acclaimed for its' realistic portrayal of Asperger's syndrome - and although some with Aspergers disagree with this depiction, Haddon based it on previous work he had done with autistic young people. Although not originally written for an adult audience, it proved to be a successful crossover hit, and his most recent book and second adult-novel, A Spot of Bother, was published in September 2006.

Mark Haddon is also known for his series of Agent Z books, one of which, Agent Z and the Penguin from Mars was made into a 1996 Children's BBC sitcom. However, his younger fans will be pleased to learn that not all of his work is now aimed at that elusive crossover audience: In 2004, he wrote the screenplay for a BBC adaptation of Raymond Briggs's classic story, Fungus the Bogeyman.

Here, he talks about the pressure of following a prizewinning book and his strategy for analysing why The Curious Incident was so popular. He also discusses his style - expanding big truisms from small incidents - why he thinks his books are interesting, selling his books' film rights and why Swindon and Peterbrorough are the centre of the world…

A Spot of Bother is priced £12.99, and is available from all good bookshops now.