Celebrated Oxford author Mark Haddon has revealed how an ‘exasperating’ past five years made it difficult for him to write.
In 2003, Mr Haddon’s mystery novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time became a bestseller, and won the Whitbread Best Novel and Book of the Year prize.
The story about a teenage boy with behavioural difficulties was told in the first person and was published in separate editions for adults and children. It was also adapted for a stage play.
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The author went on to write a series of published short stories.
In an extensive interview with The Guardian, Mr Haddon explained why the past five years have been “peculiar and exasperating”, and have made it difficult for him to be able to write, despite writing feeling like “his main reason for being on the planet”.
He said: “Thanks to a triple heart bypass, some underperforming psychiatric medication and long Covid, I’ve been unable to write for most of that period.
“The heart bypass happened in early 2019, three weeks before my last novel, The Porpoise, was published.”
The author said he was lucky because he realised something was wrong before he had a heart attack.
He added: “When I was out for a run my heart rate would hit a ceiling and I had the peculiar sensation of something constricting my fuel line (this turned out to be a pretty accurate description of my dangerously narrowed cardiac arteries reaching full capacity).”
Mr Haddon said a year after his heart operation there was a breakthrough and he was able to write two short stories, one a version of the Minotaur myth set in medieval England, and the other a version of the Temptation of St Antony.
However, the “fog” then closed over again before he was able to write another short story.
(Image: Blackwell’s) Mr Haddon then got Covid for the second time, which developed into long Covid, which left him exhausted – he was unable to run and most days he couldn’t write or read either.
Working as a listener for the Samaritans, and drawing has helped his recovery. And making connections and discussing art on Instagram has also helped.
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Mr Haddon added: “I’ve got to know people on Instagram, too, who’ve come to feel like friends, some of whom I’ve subsequently met in real life, some of whom I’m still to meet.
“Over the last few months the fog has thinned a little. Permanently I hope, though I’m not making any bets.”
The author said he was not complaining, and thought that the long Covid may have “run its course”.
He added: “I’m running again, up and down the Thames and on Shotover and around my beloved Wytham Woods and its blissful.”
Dogs and Monsters, Mark Haddon’s latest collection of short stories, is published by Chatto & Windus on August 29.
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