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

did.

Acknowledgments
    An extra thank you to Micke, Liza, Rixon, Maud and Uncle Hans.
    – Jonas

International Praise for The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared:
    ‘First-rate’ Der Spiegel, Germany
     
    ‘A mixture of road movie and picaresque novel in modern packaging. A great pleasure to read’ NDR Kultur , Germany
     
    ‘Completely crazy, an incredibly funny story’
Aftonbladet, Sweden
     
    ‘It’s a story that twists and turns every action and word. The language is ingenious and surprisingly different’
Nerikea Allehanda, Sweden
     
    ‘The new international phenomenon… overflowing with humour’ El Mundo, Spain
     
    ‘Swedish black comic novel that reads like a road trip with Forrest Gump at the wheel’ NU.nl, Netherlands
     
    ‘Zany picaresque novel’ Trouw , Netherlands
     
    ‘Dynamite comedy’ Le Figaro , France
     
    ‘Hilarious… a publishing phenomenon’
Corriere della Sera , Italy
     
    ‘Incredibly charming, told with a cheery simplicity’
Dagbladet, Norway
     
    ‘Hilarious… a celebration of absurd humour’
Helsingin Sanomat , Finland
     
    ‘Bestseller joins the Nordic invasion of Britain. Hesperus Press … is likely to show its bigger rivals how wrong they were to turn it down’ The Observer, UK

Interview with the Author
    How did you come up with the idea of making the main character of your book a hundred-year-old man who goes on the run around Sweden?
    The story was among at least twenty others in my head. I started because of the book’s title – I immediately fell in love with it once I had invented it. I said to myself that I wanted to read a book with such a title; I only had to write it first! I also needed the main character to be a hundred years old to have lived through the whole twentieth century, to use him as a guide in the parallel story along with the road trip in Sweden today.
    How do you write a book that becomes a bestselling novel?
    I am sure there as many ways as there are bestselling novels. My way was to write a feel-good novel. They say that laughter prolongs one’s life. Imagine if I have prolonged someone’s life!
    Are you just as funny in everyday life? You have to be, because it’s a hilarious story.
    I think it was Mark Twain who said something like this: ‘To read an interesting book and then to meet the author in question, is like first having a great goose liver paté only to afterwards meet the goose.’ (I am sorry, Mr Twain, if I have remembered this quote incorrectly.)
    How do you foresee yourself as a hundred-year-old man?
    I hope that by then I will have Allan Karlsson’s care-free attitude. But – unlike Allan – I hope that I am still interested in political and social issues. Maybe I’ll go on tours to schools orcolleges to make teenagers understand that life is an adventure, very much worth living (and that they ain’t seen nothing yet!)
    What would you do if you were one hundred and had a chance to ‘climb out of the window’ and disappear? What kind of adventure would you like to experience?
    I think that I’ve already climbed out of the window a few times in life. To me climbing out would actually maybe be to stay where I am now, with my son, the poultry house, the cat. To go to the village sauna each Saturday afternoon, to sit there among grumpy old men, just to be updated about what’s happening in the neighbourhood. But I think a lot of people really should consider the possibility of climbing out of their window. My perspective is that we live only once, I cannot be sure but that is what I believe. I think that if you’ve once asked yourself: ‘Should I…’ then the answer should be: ‘Yes!’ Otherwise, how would you ever get to know that you shouldn’t?

Reading Group Discussion Questions
     
What do you think are the central themes of the book?
Why do you think the author chose to make the main character one hundred years old?
Why do you think Allan climbed out of the window in the first place?
Did you enjoy the way the novel switched from the present day to the past? What do you think this structure brought to your experience of the novel?
The author uses modern historical events as a backdrop to the plot. How did you feel this affected your response to the novel?
How much of a person’s character do you think is shaped by the times in which they live?
What do you think drove Allan to steal the suitcase?
Did you prefer Allan’s character as a younger man or older man?