If you've ever read the novel, the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime,

then you won't be the least bit surprised by the next thing I say.

Mark Haddon has figured out how to make perfect sense of Pericles.

From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.

I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folgers director.

Mark Haddon is a gifted novelist.

His work takes twists and turns that sometimes seem to only make sense in the context of his stories.

And what is Shakespeare's Pericles, but a series of twists and turns that often seem to make no sense at all? A while back, Haddon was one of a number of writers approached by the Hogarth Shakespeare

series about adapting one of the plays.

He ended up not writing the book with them, but as you'll hear, the suggestion did get his wheels turning.

And that's to the benefit of all of us.

His new novel, The Porpoise, is a crazy imaginative ride that swings back and forth between continents, between reality and fantasy, and between the 21st and 17th centuries AD and the 5th century BC to tell a story about,

well, that's hard to say, though it's not hard to enjoy.

Mark Haddon came into a studio in Oxford, England,

recently to talk about his work and where in the world it comes from. We call this podcast

the porpoise how he bounced and tumbled. Mark Hadden is interviewed by Barbara Bogabe.

When Hobart first approached you about writing something in their Shakespeare adaptation series,

what was your reaction?

I mean, hell yes, or not in a million years, or something in between?

I was initially skeptical about the whole project, but I certainly got back to them at

time and said, A, who wants a prose version of something that is extremely good

already? And also, you need to give writers some kind of lee wastes, a way of them owning the

...