Swedish writer Jonas Jonasson brings us a century of insanity and dictators in 400 pages.
These efforts produce an echo of the original; they result in a very strange sensation of a story. However, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson and translated by Rod Bradbury, hereafter THYOMWCOTWD (because that makes it much simpler), skips past this limitation because it actually is a strange story. It is an honest-to-God strange, shamelessly outrageous, feel-good romp of what I can only call a backlash to the gritty horror and dark thrills in Swedish noir writing that I usually stay away from.
Allan Karlsson is a one hundred-year-old man who climbs out of the window of his old people’s home on his 100th birthday. He walks into a world which, when complemented by flashbacks from his earlier life, is more often that not eventful and delightfully carefree (despite some macabre deaths).
The first order of Karlsson’s escape day: steal a suitcase from a fellow passenger at the bus station only to discover that it contains fifty million Kronor. Armed with this ultimate resource and nothing to lose, Karlsson runs into one peculiar character after the other. The world is quite imaginatively his oyster and he assembles an equally inspired crew (rather Master and Margarita here). They include: a fake Bible seller (the old Testament ends with “and they lived happily ever after”); his brother, who is a hot dog vendor but is familiar with almost every profession known to man because he spent over fifty years in university studying every degree and completing none; a woman (the Beauty) whose pets include an Alsatian and an elephant; a thief who specialises in large-scale corruption and robberies; a mob boss and a detective inspector.
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As if this did not provide enough excitement, add to the list of the centenarian’s adventures saving General Franco’s life and sharing paella with him. He helps the Americans develop and perfect their nuclear bomb. He makes great friends with and gets drunk with a very appreciative Harry Truman. At some point he goes to China to help Chiang Kai-shek’s wife blow up the communists. There is dinner with Stalin and a taste of a gulag. There is a plane ride to London with Churchill and at some point an umbrella in a cocktail on a beach in Bali. These are just the highlights.
Apart from being entertaining, the plot is also surprisingly flexible. It moves in concentric circles — it starts off with a minor occurrence and then keeps adding to them. And while these grow greater and greater, Jonasson manages to maintain their strong link to a counter-plot, ie the earlier life of Allan Karlsson, in alternating chapters. The flashbacks aren’t placed so much to inform or underpin the current happenings (the motley crew on the run from the law with stolen Kronor), but to enhance the narrative and add a dimension which really drives home the definition of an eventful life.
It’s like reading two books in one but without it being jarring or forced. The writing is so delightfully deadpan and at other times so ironic that the immensity of the narrative (we are dealing with a century’s worth of insanity and dictators), is effortlessly eased into four hundred pages.
Also a factor in the book’s triumph is the narration. While it takes place in third person, it largely bases itself on Karlsson’s observations which tend to be frank, almost Forest Gump-like as some reviewers have said. He is basically a nice guy, who is happy to help people (the Americans and their bomb), but only if asked nicely. So what happens when Stalin starts to get angry with Karlsson over replicating the American bomb for the Russians?
“...Did you have Stalin repeat a homage to the enemies of the revolution?” asked Stalin who always spoke of himself in the third person when he got angry. Allan answered that he would need some time to think to be able to translate ‘sjung hopp faderallan lallan lej’ into English, but that Mr Stalin could rest assured that it was nothing more than a cheerful ditty.
“A cheerful ditty?” said Comrade Stalin in a loud voice. “Does Mr Karlsson think Stalin looks like a cheerful person?”
Allan was beginning to tire of Stalin’s touchiness. The old geezer was quite red in the face with anger, but not about very much...
...Stalin exploded again.
“Who do think you are, you damned rat? Do you think that you, a representative of fascism, of horrid American capitalism, of everything on this earth that Stalin despises that you, you can come to the Kremlin, to the Kremlin, and bargain with Stalin and bargain with Stalin?”
“Why do you say everything twice?” Allan wondered while Stalin went on...
...”I shall destroy capitalism! Do you hear! I shall destroy every single capitalist! And I shall start with you, you dog, if you don’t help us with the bomb!”
Allan noted that he had managed to be both a rat and a dog in the course of a minute or so. And that Stalin was being rather inconsistent because now he wanted to use Allan’s services after all. But Allan wasn’t going to sit there and listen to this abuse any longer. He had come to Moscow to help them out, not to be shouted at. Stalin would have to manage on his own.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Allan.
“What,” said Stalin angrily.
“Why don’t you shave off that moustache?”
With that the dinner was over, because the interpreter had fainted.
Other reviews have called this book hilarious or laugh-out loud, but I found it more dark comedy than raucous LOLs. Stating the obvious as a technique sometimes mitigates the otherwise horrific reality of a scene and at other times work to create satire. For instance, one of the mob boss’s henchmen, whose money Karlsson has stolen, catches up with the crew only to meet a gruesome death — under the bottom of Sonya the pet elephant.
The book is not without its flaws. Despite the sparkling sense of humour that flows throughout, there are parts which needlessly drag. These chapters are the ones set in current time with Karlsson inadvertently bumping off one henchman after the other and amassing more and more crew members. This running narrative pales in comparison to the one about his past. Those parts are larger than life and worth marvelling at, not just for the fantastic events, but also for the effortlessness with which Karlsson’s life propels forward.
In him we see the classic example of someone being swept off his feet by forces large and (at times) benevolent. And thus, while I normally scoff at the pretentiousness of epigraphs in literature, the one in THYOMWCOTWD is near perfect. It encapsulates Karlsson’s spirit to embrace life and take a chance, no matter what the consequences, because eventually, you will end up on a spectacular beach with a cocktail in your hand and fifty million Kronor in your rather large pocket: “Things are what they are, and whatever will be, will be.”
Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, August 25th, 2013.
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seems evoking !