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

On his 100th birthday, the main character, Allan Karlsson, escapes from a retirement home and, at a bus stop, grabs a stranger’s bag containing fifty million kronor. Alongside the present-day events—which bring together a love story, a thriller involving explosions, bandits who are more or less alive, and an unmistakably very alive elephant—Jonas Jonasson tells the story of Allan’s extraordinary life. “A gloriously deserving lie of a novel, with a little truth mixed in,” publisher Piratförlaget wrote about Jonasson’s debut novel when it was released in 2009. “The novel offers a comic way of looking at the most important events of the past century and their impact on our lives. The centenarian Allan Karlsson insists that politics do not interest him; the main thing is having something to eat and drink. His so-called neutrality sets off a series of destructive events in world history. I think this is very relevant in showing the impact of apolitical attitudes on the processes around us,” says Mārtiņš Eihe, director of this carnivalesque, dynamic production.