Swedish writers have been pleasantly surprising me lately. Not that I’ve read a lot of them, but first Fredrik Backman became an insanely “tasty” discovery for me a few years ago, and now Jonas Jonasson. There’s something about these Swedes. They seem to write about life, yet they do it lightly, beautifully, and with touches of humor.
For many years Jonas Jonasson worked as a journalist and television producer (just like my wife), and then suddenly decided to drastically change his life and write a book. And that book sold like crazy—first in Sweden, and then around the world.
The book titled The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared really does begin with the main character, the old man Allan—whose 100th birthday is literally minutes away from being celebrated at the retirement home—deciding to escape through the window. And to get far away before anyone notices he’s gone. What follows is a chain of unforeseen events, in which the old man almost immediately finds himself in possession of a suitcase with a million, a whole group of companions, and a small trail of bodies behind him.
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