7.6 /10 1 Votes
Cover artist Eric Thunfors Publisher Piratförlaget Published in English 12 July 2012 Originally published 9 September 2009 Country Sweden | 3.8/5 Goodreads Language Swedish Publication date 9 September 2009 Pages 391 pages Published in english 12 July 2012 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Original title Hundraåringen som klev ut genom fönstret och försvann Adaptations The Hundred Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (2013) Similar The Girl Who Saved the King, Hitman Anders and the Meani, A Man Called Ove, The Unlikely Pilgrimag, The Rosie Project | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (Swedish: Hundraåringen som klev ut genom fönstret och försvann, also known as The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (UK) and The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared in the US) is a 2009 comic novel by the Swedish author Jonas Jonasson.
Contents
Plot
Allan Karlsson is about to celebrate his hundredth birthday, and a party is planned at his retirement home. Allan is alert despite his age, but is not interested in attending the party. Instead he climbs out the window and disappears. He walks in his slippers to the nearest bus station, intending to travel as far as his available cash will allow. While at the bus station, an angry young man with a suitcase, too big to fit both himself and it inside a toilet, desperately asks Allan to hold the case for him and wait. Within half a minute Allan's bus arrives and Allan takes the suitcase with him to the bus and boards. The young angry man misses the bus. The suitcase turns out to be stuffed with drug money, and Karlsson is chased by drug dealers trying recover their lost money. The retirement home calls the police to look for Allan. The police have no knowledge of the money and are only looking for Allan who is somewhat absent minded. Allan is simply trying to escape his retirement home confinement and gets caught up in criminal activity by accident so he ends up, unknowingly, being hunted by the police and murderous criminals.
The novel intercuts Karlsson's adventures as a centenarian with increasingly fantastic past episodes from his long life. As the novel proceeds it transpires that Karlsson had helped to make the atom bomb, became good friends with Harry S. Truman and General Franco, knew Stalin, Kim Jong-il, Mao Tse-tung, and Soong Mei-ling, foiled an assassination plot against Winston Churchill, and was a participant behind the scenes in many of the key events of the twentieth century.
Release and reception
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared was released as hardback and audiobook in 2009, and as paperback in 2010. It became the best selling book in Sweden in 2010 and by July 2012 had sold three million copies worldwide. The audiobook, read by the actor Björn Granath, won the Iris Ljudbokspris award in 2010. The book was published in the United Kingdom by Hesperus Press on 12 July 2012 and in the United States by Hyperion Books on 11 September 2012.
In 2013 it was adapted into a film of the same name.