The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson

After stealing a young punk’s money-filled suitcase, he embarks on a wild adventure, and through a combination of wits, luck, and circumstance, ends up on the lam from both a smalltime criminal syndicate and the police. The intricately plotted saga of Allan Karlsson begins when he escapes his retirement home on his 100th birthday by climbing out his bedroom window.

three years after its Swedish publication, in Bradbury’s pitch-perfect translation. He somehow strings these absurd plotlines together into a light and enjoyable read, creating a modern fairytale in the process.Jonasson’s laugh-out-loud debut (a bestseller in Europe) reaches the U.S.

Jonasson calls his book ‘a hopeful satire on the shortcomings of mankind’. Sternly apolitical, but happy to help and do his best as long as there are friendly manners and vodka readily available, Allan comes across like (as many critics have noted) a sort of centenarian Forrest Gump, only one who serenely plays lethal hands with Iran, the KGB, the CIA and the atomic bomb. Taking in his stride adventures that bring him face to face with Churchill, Stalin, Mao, Truman and Franco among others, Allan concludes that dinners with world leaders are simply the done thing. But as the book rambles along, we are given flashbacks of Allan’s past hundred years, where, somehow, he manages to be present, if not instrumental, at nearly every key moment of the twentieth century. Soon, police and journalists, not to mention the drug syndicate, are hot on his tail, so he teams up with a mismatched crew of assistants to … well, he isn’t really sure. So far, so good – a classic road-trip beginning. So he runs away and accidentally commandeers a suitcase stuffed with millions of dollars of drug money. Karlsson, the titular old man, doesn’t really feel like attending his own hundredth birthday party, sportingly put on by the dictatorial staff at his nursing home. That and the fact that it provides a whimsical crash course in twentieth century political history. This surprised me at first, as the adventures of Allan Karlsson make for a pretty harmless, if amusing read. This strange, funny book has become a publishing sensation in Europe, selling millions of copies along with the film rights.

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson