A Madcow Book Review :The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

In his first novel, Jonas Jonasson has created a very entertaining adventure revolving around some of the major international events of the 20th century, many involving espionage and awesome mayhem. The centenarian hero is Allan Karlsson, a Swede born on May 2, 1905 to a suffragette and a social activist who died a pointless death defending a patch of ground he called The Real Russia. Allan became a “miserably paid errand boy” at Nitroglycerin Ltd.’s factory, where his canny ability to overhear, understand what he heard and be in the right place at the right time would serve him well. After he was orphaned at 15, he began Karlsson Dynamite Company, and his experiments and expertise with explosives would rock the world for the next 85 years.
On May 2, 2005, Allan’s 100th birthday, the Mayor of Malmköping, the director of the Old Folks’ home, and other old people are waiting in the next room to celebrate his longevity. Allan opens the ground-floor window of his room, steps out into a flowerbed and begins his shuffle toward freedom. He is wearing his pee-slippers and has only a bit of money, but he heads for the bus station. A rude young man with Never Again stitched on his jacket asks Allan to guard a huge gray suitcase, but his bus comes while the young man is in the bathroom and Allan chooses to board the bus with the suitcase --- “a decision that said ‘yes’ to life.”
The inevitable chase by the rude young man and other Never Again cohorts to reclaim the gray suitcase with 50 million worth of crown notes lasts for a few weeks. Karlsson’s escape entourage includes a ne’er-do-well cheat, a foul-mouthed redhead, a hot dog vendor, a four-and-a-half-ton Asian elephant, and a dog named Buster.
The pursuit chapters are balanced with chronicles of Allan’s chaotic life, each of them highly implausible but oddly possible. In the chapter 1939-1945, for instance, he is a subservient waiter at the Los Alamos laboratory and listens to the despair of the scientists on controlling a nuclear reaction after their success in achieving it. He is a voracious reader in the world of explosives, studies extensively and solves the problem. While pouring coffee in Robert Oppenheimer’s cup, the solution just slips out: “Well, if you divide the uranium into two equal parts and slap them together only when it is time, then they’ll explode when you want them to.”
The scientists quickly see the sense in his solution, and they are celebrating success when Harry S. Truman walks in, unannounced as usual. He praises the good news, invites Allan for a bite to eat, and shares two bottles of tequila with him. At the conclusion of a convivial evening, they are interrupted by the news that President Roosevelt is dead. Allan’s friendship with Harry endures and surfaces again in other chapters, with Harry once helping Allan obtain a valid Swedish passport in the early morning hours. Possible? Well, yes.
Allan and Herbert Einstein (Albert’s idiotic half-brother, unknown to the world) are sentenced to 30 years in a labor camp in Vladivostok, but after five years, Allan decides he needs a drink. To get that drink, he must escape. And to escape he needs “Soviet uniforms, and then a car, which would need keys in the ignition and a full fuel tank, plus no owner…then the guarded gates would have to open…and nobody would follow them.” The implausible plan works; this success leads to another, and another, and he eventually becomes the aide-decamp at the Indonesian Embassy in Paris.
There is little physical description of Allan: his “hefty fist” swallowing Kim Jong II’s hand and his appearance as the Wild Man of Borneo after not shaving for 15 years. It is up to the reader to create the whole character as the innate likability, philosophical honesty and genuine attachment to living fully are seen.
Jonasson’s book might be best enjoyed across the sofa from another reader, over the course of several days, with an ongoing discussion about the Vietnam War demonstrations, Stalin’s moustache, Mao Tse-tung’s third wife, or the ineptitude of local authorities. Add a bottle of excellent vodka.