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

For the film based on the novel, see The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (film)

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

The cover of the Swedish original version of the book.
Author	[[{{#Property:P50}}]]
Original title	{{#Property:P357}}
Cover artist	Eric Thunfors
Country	Sweden
Language	Swedish
Publisher	Piratförlaget
Publication date	9 September 2009
Published in English	12 July 2012
Pages	391 pages
ISBN	978-91-642-0296-3

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.

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, an angry young man with a suitcase too big to fit it and himself inside the toilet he desperately needs gives it to Allan and tells him to hold it for him and wait. Within half a minute Alan's bus arrives and Alan 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 drug money. The retirement home calls the police to look for Alan. The Police are not aware of the money in the suitcase in Allan's possession. The angry young man was transporting the money and Allan just got stuck with it. The police have no knowledge of the money and are only looking for Alan who is somewhat absent minded. Allan is purely trying to escape the Retirement Home confinement and gets caught up in criminal activity by accident so he ends up, unkowingly, 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 world wide. 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.