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

On his 100th birthday, the main character, Allan Karlsson, escapes from a nursing home and grabs a stranger’s bag containing fifty million kronor at a bus stop. Alongside the present-day events—in which a love story, a thriller involving explosions, gangsters who are more or less alive, and an unmistakably very lively elephant become thoroughly entangled—Jonas Jonasson tells the story of Allan’s extraordinary life. “A resounding success: a novel of lies with a little truth mixed in,” wrote publisher Piratförlaget when Jonasson’s debut novel was published in 2009. “In a comic way, the novel offers a look at the most important events of the last century and their impact on our lives. The centenarian Allan Karlsson stresses that he is not interested in politics; the main thing is having something to eat and drink. This so-called neutrality of his triggers a series of devastating events in world history. I think this is very timely as a way of showing the apolitical influence on the processes around us,” says Mārtiņš Eihe, director of this carnivalesque, dynamic production.