The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
SynopsisPlot
After a long and eventful life, Allan Karlsson ends up in a nursing home, believing it to be his last stop. The only problem is that he's still in good health, and in one day, he turns 100. A big celebration is in the works, but Allan really isn't interested (and he'd like a bit more control over his vodka consumption). So he decides to escape. He climbs out the window in his slippers and embarks on a hilarious and entirely unexpected journey, involving, among other surprises, a suitcase stuffed with cash, some unpleasant criminals, a friendly hot-dog stand operator, and an elephant (not to mention a death by elephant).
Story
About this book
Allan Karlsson turns 100 years old in a nursing home and has no interest in the birthday party being planned for him. Instead, he opens a window, steps out in his slippers, and walks away. What follows is an unplanned chain of events that includes a suitcase full of money, a series of criminals looking for that suitcase, and a growing cast of unlikely companions picked up along the way, among them a hot-dog stand operator and, at one point, an elephant.
The novel by Swedish author Jonas Jonasson moves between two timelines. One follows Allan's present-day escape and the escalating trouble it causes. The other traces his long life backward through the twentieth century, placing him at key historical moments as an explosives expert whose practical skills keep drawing him into world events he has little ideological interest in. Allan is not a hero or a villain. He is someone who tends to say yes when asked and who finds dynamite more interesting than politics.
The tone is consistently comic, built on understatement and absurd coincidence rather than satire or slapstick. Jonasson treats Allan's century of life as a string of accidental encounters, each one stranger than the last.
