The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon — July 24, 2026

 

The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time - first edition 2003 by David Fickling Books,UK

Mark Haddon’s Novel concerns a boy named Christopher Boone whose mind functions far outside the typical norm. He is labelled as ‘neurodivergent.’

Neurodivergence is an umbrella term used to describe people whose brains process, learn, or experience the world differently than what is considered typical.

Instead of treating these differences as flaws or illnesses to be "cured," the Neurodivergence concept views them as natural variations in human brain function – much like biodiversity in an ecosystem. This idea accords with the modern trend of accommodating everyone into society and finding a place for them. Here are some definitions from an AI app, Gemini.

Common Types of Neurodivergence

Neurodivergence isn't a medical diagnosis itself, but rather a category that includes several specific conditions and traits:

• Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC): Differences in social communication, processing sensory information, and deep, focused interests.
• ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder): Variations in executive function, impulse control, focus, and energy management.
• Dyslexia, Dyscalculia & Dysgraphia: Specific learning differences that affect reading, processing numbers, or writing.
• Dyspraxia (DCD): Differences in motor coordination, spatial awareness, and planning physical movements.
• Tourette Syndrome: Neurological conditions involving involuntary physical or vocal movements (tics).

Mark Haddon has explained that the novel was sparked by a single, vivid visual image rather than a fully formed plot:

A dog lying dead on a front lawn with a garden fork thrust through it so deeply that the fork entered the earth and remained standing upright.

At the time, Haddon was trying to write a new novel and sat down to write three entirely different opening paragraphs without knowing where any of them would lead. The image of the dead dog with the upright garden fork was one of those three experiments. 

Original Cover of the Novel shows the scene that triggered the novel

As he wrote it, he began imagining who would find this dog and how that person would react to the scene. That train of thought led directly to the creation of the narrator, Christopher Boone, a teenager who sees the world with intense logic, order, and detachment. He is possessed of a different sort of mind than normal people. What began as a striking image for Haddon became the opening line and trigger incident of the entire book.

One of the creatures that provides a stand-in for the human friendship missed by Christopher is a pet rat, named Toby. Here is a picture:

Christopher and his pet rat Toby

Lastly here is a collage of Collage of Five Famous Persons who may have been Autistic by the modern definition. 

Collage of Five Famous Persons who may have been Autistic

Top Left: Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (1830 – 1886), Poet

Top Right: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791), Composer

Center: Isaac Newton (1643 – 1727), Mathematician and Physicist

Bottom Left: Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1902 – 1984) , Physicist

Bottom Right: Steven Paul Jobs (1955 – 2011), Computer Entrepreneur

Poetry Session — June 26, 2026

Several poets who have never been chosen before at KRG were selected from the Soviet Union, Syria, Spain and England.

Galich performing his poem about Pasternak with guitar accompaniment

https://youtu.be/aYRQIr6pTRQ?si=JAjT0E-EgZ8o2vk6

The Soviet Union was an especially difficult place for poets — recall Osip Mandelstam who said:

    Poetry is respected only in this country – people are killed for it. There's no place where more people are killed for poetry.

Mandelstam didn’t survive Stalin’s wrath for writing veiled unflattering verses referring to the dictator. Galich, born in Moscow but living in Sebastopol in Crimea, was more circumspect. Once he knew he was in the bad books of the official Union of Soviet Writers, being expelled from it in late 1971, he made his way out, emigrated, and lived to see his satirical poems published from exile in Western Europe. However, he came to grief by electrocution under suspicious circumstances, verifying once again the dictum of Mandelstam and the long reach of the NKVD (now called the KGB).

The poet Noor Akram Al-Hariri

Noor Akram Al-Hariri is a Syrian poet and refugee living in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan. The Zaatari refugee camp is the world's largest camp for Syrian refugees, located in the Mafraq Governorate of Jordan, just 10 km from the Syrian border. Established in July 2012, it has transformed from a temporary tent settlement into a semi-permanent urban-style community that currently hosts 50,000 residents, a mere 10% of the Syrians that Jordan has provided refuge to. Here is a reel showing her writing and speaking from the camp where she lives:

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1395635838333549/

Noor is not known for many poems. Indeed apart from this one poem Pamela chose which deals with her feelings of exile from Syria to Jordan (where many of her exiled compatriots live), we know of no other poem of hers. Is she a serious poet or a poster-girl chosen by UNHCR to highlight the plight of refugees? Though she has written a book = I Am a Refugee – which documents the daily struggles, memories, and hopes of the displaced people she encountered living in the Zaatari camp, this blogger could discover no other poem by her. 

The sprawling Zaatari refugee camp in the desert housing 50,000 people (BBC)

In the BBC news site below you can see a video of the Zaatari refugee camp from the air. Chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet reports from Jordan on the scale of the crisis from a helicopter flying over the camp.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-35492705

The manuscript page in Lorca's hand with the poem La Raiz Amarga – on the reverse was the newly discovered poem Canta el reloj

Lorca was an accidental find by Joe who came across a news item in The Guardian newspaper online on April 18 about the unearthing of a manuscript page containing a known poem on the recto, and a never before seen poem of Lorca on the verso – just 6 lines, which had lain undiscovered for 93 years after it was published! So a fresh translation into English was fashioned and here you can read it for the first time.

Smart Devices is a collection by Carol Rumens of 52 of her Poem of the Week columns from The Guardian

Another poet, Carol Rumens, whose life work has been the presentation and popularisation of hundreds of poets and poems over 20 years in her column titled Poem of the Week in The Guardian, was herself featured as a poet with a sample titled The Émigrée, just one among hundreds of her poems. She published  20 volumes of poetry between 1973 and 2024.  

Besides you will meet in this account of our session celebrated poets like Walt Whitman (Passage to India) and Gerard Manley Hopkins (God’s Grandeur). The WWI war poet and essayist, Edward Thomas, is represented by an appealing poem (The Unknown Bird). Kavita chose a favourite of hers, Ada Limón, the Latina poet laureate of the United States for 3 years until April 2025. And lastly, Robert Macfarlane who combined with the illustrator Jackie Morris to produce an admirable book of nature poetry!

The Lost Words, cover of book by Robert Macfarlane and illustrator Jackie Morris