The Old Man’s Adventures….

Sometimes you come across a book that initially does not seem promising at all, but because your friends kept eulogizing about it, you keep at it, all the while wondering what in the blazes did they see in the book; that is until you reach a certain section, and the dots begin to connect and by the time, you finish the book, you are a convert! This is my story of reading The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. I bought the book last year August as a gift for someone. I never ended up giving it as I found things she better liked than reading and my flatmate–sisterfromanotherlife-fellowbookreader  (mentallynailbiting) ended up devouring the book! She then kept nagging me to read it, again and again and again and I took more than 12 months, to reach that one page where the dots connected and now it’s been a couple of week’s since I finished the book, but I am still reeling from it!

The novel begins with the one hundredth birthday of  Allan Karlsson, who decided to climb out of the window of his old age home as he wants to live a little more and does not find the life of the old age home quite suiting his needs! He then ends up with bag full of cash, with a drug lord(Gunmar Gerdin) on his tail and the inspector of police (Gunmar Gerdin) wanting him arrested for what may be triple murder. On the way, he picks up a motley crew of a had been criminal (Julius Johnsson), a would have been many things but now hot dog seller (Benny Ljungberg) and his religious brother (Bosse), a beauty with a farm( Gunilla Björkund) and a dog (Kicki) and an elephant (Sonya), as they travel from Sweden to Bali in a trail of irascible adventures and fun! Along the way, we get flashes from Allan’s life as helped shape almost all the events of the 21st century and meet President Johnson and Nixon, Mao, Stalin, Franco and all the great players that shaped the 100 years and bringing the circle back to Allan and his interesting past!

This book is both an adventure tale and a social and political satire with succinct commentary on modern history! Those who decry this novel as political and say they do not like politics ….er…wake up! We live in a world, where saying that they are not political is in itself a political statement! What’s more to say, this book is political is one of the most simplistic and superficial account of the book ever! Mr. Jonnason goes out of his way to show the fragile and imperfect nature of politics and ideology and without taking any sides, beautifully shows that all a man needs to be happy is some peace, quiet, friends, food and a good drink…er..make it two drinks; ok three!  Very few modern literature, have such brilliant display of political satire, as brought forth in this novel. To quote one among my favorite phrases  in describing the politics of the Chiang Kai-shek, Soong May-ling & Mao Tse-tung – “A clown and a parasite, Allan thought, doing battle with a cowardly, incompetent figure who to cap it all had the intelligence of a cow, and between them, a serpent drunk on green banana liquor.” Wish Chinese politics course during my graduate school years had been half as interesting! But there is so much more to this book beyond politics – in the character of Allan Karlsoon, we find a the quintessential man of Zen, who is happy to be left alone with his food  and friends, no matter which country or ruler. He is brilliant but does not seek power to further his cause and will only use his willy brains to get out of tricky situations. He is loyal, and in his off hand way caring and lives with an eternal optimism of taking life as it comes and making most of it! The other cast of characters play beautifully off Allan’s scheme of things and come off brilliantly showing the complete range of mankind – the brilliant, brave and sometimes foolish sides of human nature! Needless to say the writing is FUNNY and ha-ha funny and never is there a dull moment, if you stick it through the first 30 odd pages!

To end, I would only say, READ THIS BOOK! It is one of those irrepressibly funny and brimming with positivism, novel, that stays with you for a very very long time!

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