In an interview on Autism and Asperger Syndrome

Let’s move on to your second choice, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, a 1974 film by Werner Herzog. Could you tell me a bit about it?

I saw this film more than 30 years ago. It describes an enigmatic real-life character who turned up in a village in Nuremberg in 1828. He has no language and seems completely outside of human culture, and is taken in by the local doctor who tries to socialise him.

Part of the enigma about Hauser was his origins – was he abandoned, did he have an important family history? But the big question was, how could somebody be, as it were, outside of human society and find it so hard to develop language and to make sense of people?

Kaspar Hauser might be the first well-documented case of autism in literature, or even in history. Some people wonder whether autism is just a modern phenomenon, but here we have a very early account. The film (and the original book) raises very similar issues to those raised in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and shares a main character who is somehow detached from humanity. Like The Curious Incident, Kaspar Hauser also suffered neglect and abuse (of a different kind – he was reportedly chained up and isolated for the first 17 years of his life), so this by no means represents autism. Indeed, it could be more similar to the case of Genie, a so-called feral child who was also reared in isolation and never properly developed language or social skills.

It’s interesting that they have managed to make such an interesting film – and book, in the case of your first choice – with a central character who is so difficult to relate to.

I think that in some ways that helps the reader. It taps into the same fascination that anthropologists have with other cultures, but in this case it is a fascination with someone who is not part of any culture. There’s a sort of mirroring that goes on, because the character is so detached he is observing other people. Some people with Asperger syndrome describe themselves as feeling as though they came from another planet: they watch human interaction and they don’t quite understand it. They don’t feel that they can participate in it. But it creates an outsider’s point of view, which I think works very well in literature and film.