Where to Start with Jonas Jonasson
Jonas Jonasson is a Swedish author and former journalist who became an international publishing sensation with his debut novel, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (2009). Born in 1961 in Växjö, he worked for many years as a journalist at the Swedish newspaper Expressen, then became a media consultant and started a company producing sports and events for Swedish television. He sold the company and moved to the Swiss-Italian border to write his first novel. The book sold over six million copies worldwide and was adapted into a popular Swedish film in 2013. Jonasson’s novels are characterized by their absurdist humor, picaresque structure, and a cheerful refusal to take history or human nature too seriously. His other works include The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden (2013), Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All (2015), and Sweet Sweet Revenge Ltd. (2021). He lives on the Swedish island of Gotland.
Start here
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared
Jonas Jonasson · 384 pages · 2009 · Easy
Themes: adventure, history, humor, aging, absurdity
Allan Karlsson turns one hundred and decides he has had quite enough of his nursing home. He climbs out of the window in his slippers and heads to the nearest bus station, where he impulsively steals a suitcase from a man in the bathroom. The suitcase belongs to a criminal gang and is full of money, and Allan’s escape sets off a chain of absurd events. Meanwhile, flashback chapters reveal that Allan has spent the twentieth century stumbling through world-changing moments, accidentally influencing events from the Spanish Civil War to the Manhattan Project to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Why Start Here
This is Jonasson’s debut and his best-known work by a wide margin. It showcases everything that makes his writing unique: the joyful absurdity, the blending of historical figures with fictional farce, and the irresistible central character of Allan, a man so placid and unflappable that not even meeting Stalin or Mao can ruffle him.
The novel works perfectly as a starting point because it is entirely self-contained, endlessly entertaining, and requires no particular knowledge of Swedish literature or twentieth-century history to enjoy. The historical episodes are played for comedy, not accuracy, and the present-day adventure is pure slapstick pleasure.
What to Expect
A 384-page comic novel alternating between two timelines. The present-day chapters follow Allan’s picaresque adventure through the Swedish countryside. The historical chapters span the twentieth century with gleeful disregard for probability. The humor is broad, warm, and relentless. Adapted into a Swedish film in 2013 that became one of Sweden’s most successful films.
Alternatives
Jonas Jonasson · 432 pages · 2013 · Easy
Nombeko Mayeki grows up on a rubbish dump in Soweto, South Africa, during apartheid. Through a chain of wildly improbable events, she ends up working in a secret nuclear weapons facility, stealing an atomic bomb, and eventually crossing paths with the King of Sweden. Jonasson applies the same absurdist formula that made his debut a sensation: take real history, add fictional characters of superhuman resilience and minimal common sense, and see what happens.
Why Start Here
If you loved the first novel and want more of Jonasson’s particular brand of comic fiction, this delivers exactly that. The formula is similar but the setting is different, moving from the Cold War to apartheid South Africa, with a female protagonist whose resourcefulness and dry wit rival Allan Karlsson’s. It is slightly longer and more sprawling than the debut, but equally entertaining.
What to Expect
A 432-page comic novel with the same alternating structure of historical and contemporary storylines. The humor is broad and the coincidences outrageous. Jonasson does not shy away from serious subjects like apartheid and nuclear proliferation, but treats them with the same irreverent absurdism he applies to everything.