The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared (Hundraåringen som klev ut genom fönstret och försvann) by Jonas Jonasson, Sweden, 2009

I read this book many years ago when it was first published (2009), and really enjoyed it. At the centre of the book is Allan Karlsson – the 100-year-old man of the title – who escapes from his nursing home in May 2005, moments before the celebration planned for his hundredth birthday party.

Of course, nothing goes to plan; though, on the other hand, there never was any plan. With a suitcase of money, and while being chased by a couple of intellectually challenged thugs and while trying to avoid the fallout from a couple of very suspicious-looking deaths, Allan becomes involved with a number of dissimilar people and an elephant. The group sets out on a road trip across middle Sweden – destination unknown – and retains a laid-back holiday atmosphere in spite of the police, the media and an ambitious prosecutor being close behind them.

While the book follows Allan Karlsson’s adventures in 2005, it also relates the details of his long, and extremely interesting, life. Allan has not only experienced all of the twentieth century (minus five years) he has also managed to be deeply involved in events like the Spanish Civil War, the discovery of the atom bomb, Stalin’s Gulag, the rise of communist China… He shares meals with the world’s top leaders and is completely reliant on his wits and his survival instincts in dealings with organisations like the CIA and countries like Iran and North Korea.

Satirical and funny, Jonasson’s book gives a delightful, if slightly distorted, picture of the major political events of the twentieth century. It also paints a perceptive picture of several areas of Sweden, both geographically and socially.

Allan’s approach to life is resolutely optimistic, based on the belief that ‘… as long as we are positive, everything will work out… ‘. At the beginning of the book he elaborates on this when he notes that ‘Things are as they are and will be as they will be’ – an observation that runs through the book like a red thread tying everything together.