'Tender, transporting, creative and beautifully written ... Simply glorious, from start to finish' Rachel Clarke, author of Dear Life
Simultaneously heart-breaking and darkly hilarious, Leaving Home is a portrait of the artist both as a child and as an adult.
Mark Haddon's parents were not really cut out for the job of having children. They were cut out, respectively, for the jobs of designing abattoirs and keeping a pathologically clean and tidy house. At least Mark had the consolations of The Weetabix Solar System Wallchart, walnut whips and the occasional Babycham.
Astringently honest and scalpel sharp, this is a book about being different and seeing the world differently. It's about being a cartoonist and a care assistant. It's about family. It's about how art, in all its varied forms, provides a way of understanding and coming to terms with the mess of human life. And it's richly illustrated throughout with images from the author's childhood.
As bracing as it is embracing, Leaving Home is about escaping a place that never felt like home and learning to create somewhere that does.
'I loved this funny, melancholy and arrestingly original memoir of an artist's coming into being' Sarah Perry, author of Enlightenment
| ISBN: | 9781784746230 |
| Publication date: | 5th February 2026 |
| Author: | Mark Haddon |
| Publisher: | Chatto & Windus an imprint of Random House |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 213 pages |
| Genres: |
Memoirs Autobiography: writers Graphic novel / Comic book / Manga: Memoirs, true stories and non-fiction |
'Tender, transporting, creative and beautifully written ... Simply glorious, from start to finish' Rachel Clarke, author of Dear Life
Simultaneously heart-breaking and darkly hilarious, Leaving Home is a portrait of the artist both as a child and as an adult.
Mark Haddon's parents were not really cut out for the job of having children. They were cut out, respectively, for the jobs of designing abattoirs and keeping a pathologically clean and tidy house. At least Mark had the consolations of The Weetabix Solar System Wallchart, walnut whips and the occasional Babycham.
Astringently honest and scalpel sharp, this is a book about being different and seeing the world differently. It's about being a cartoonist and a care assistant. It's about family. It's about how art, in all its varied forms, provides a way of understanding and coming to terms with the mess of human life. And it's richly illustrated throughout with images from the author's childhood.
As bracing as it is embracing, Leaving Home is about escaping a place that never felt like home and learning to create somewhere that does.
'I loved this funny, melancholy and arrestingly original memoir of an artist's coming into being' Sarah Perry, author of Enlightenment
Leaving Home features in the following genres: Memoirs, Autobiography: writers, Graphic novel / Comic book / Manga: Memoirs, true stories and non-fiction
Leaving Home is available in Hardback
Leaving Home was written by Mark Haddon and published by Chatto & Windus an imprint of Random House
Leaving Home has 213 pages
£22.50