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

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson is a wonderful and farcical story. The reader only knows at the beginning that a man, Allan Karlsson, is eager to escape from his Swedish nursing home just before his 100-birthday party. Over the course of the book, we learn about the remarkable life he has led including stumbling into a job at the Manhattan Project where he solved Oppenheimer’s design dilemma so that he could create the atom bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That led to his becoming friends with Harry Truman who he was with when Harry learned of the death of FDR. Then there were encounters with other world leaders including Stalin to whom he gave secrets about the bomb, Charles de Gaulle, LBJ, Richard Nixon, and others. As the story moved back and forth from old times to current times, Karlsson’s disappearance was being pursued by a police detective, Chief Inspector Aronsson, who would have made Inspector Clouseau seem totally competent. Part of the story involves Karlsson mistakenly stealing a suitcase that contained 50,000,000 krona, which is about $5.6 million USD. I’ve not even mentioned the incompetent thugs who are part of the story. This story is a great escape and it gets my strong recommendation. Thanks to my traveling companion Jane for suggesting this book, and thanks to Amazon for being able to download this book from a remote corner of Viet Nam.