Allan Emmanuel Karlsson is The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared (by Jonas Jonasson). We meet Allan on his 100th birthday, waiting in his room for a birthday party he does not want to attend. So Allan climbs out his window and, as far as the authorities are concerned, disappears. (At least until Allan becomes a prime suspect in a possible murder spree). He embarks on what seems to be a highly unusual adventure, including accidentally stealing a suitcase full of cash and possibly kidnapping a hot-dog vendor, but through flashbacks and Allan’s storytelling, we realize his life has been a series of unusual adventures and unlikely events, punctuated by copious amounts of vodka and dynamite.
There are inevitable comparisons to Forrest Gump by Winston Groom (Sidebar: I hated that book. I did not hate this book). Allan’s adventures are more international, however, and while the events are extremely coincidental, he has an agency in his life that BookForrest did not. Things just happened to Forrest while Allan makes choices about where he will go (except for the time he was imprisoned in a Russian Gulag) and who he spends time with (including a runaway circus elephant named Sonya). One of Allan’s choices is to avoid religion and politics as much as possible, so his naïveté regarding world events is somewhat believable, but he still has opinions about what he experiences (mostly that people get too angry over differences in religion and politics). His motivations remain somewhat mysterious, but after a few chapters, it becomes easy to just go with the story, much like Allan does. Things will work out, somehow.
