The title of this book by Jonas Jonasson sounds like it is the beginning of a joke. Did you hear the one about the ………….? Indeed, on the very first page of the novel, one hundred-year-old Allan Karlsson climbs out his first floor window at the Old Folks’ Home in Malmkoping, Sweden. He manages to walk to the nearby bus station in the hope of getting on a bus to anywhere but Malmkoping. A young man at the station wearing a “Never Again” jacket asks him to look after his suitcase while he goes to the men’s room. Allan then proceeds to board a bus taking the young man’s suitcase with him. We eventually find out that the suitcase contains more than a million dollars. This is only the beginning of Allan’s funny, absurd tale. Along the way Allan meets a petty theft named Julius, a hot dog vender/perpetual student named Benny, Beauty, a red-headed woman who owns an elephant, and three members of the “Never Again” gang.
These are the characters in the present. We also learn about Allan’s past. And what a past he has had because Allan became an expert in explosives, which is a very handy talent. He becomes involved in the Spanish Civil War, works at Los Alamos when the atomic bomb was being developed, meets Harry Truman, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, is arrested in Iran, meets LBJ and Charles De Gaulle, befriends Albert Einstein’s brother, and eventually works as a spy for the US government.
The characters, both fictional and historic figures, are so outrageous that you have to keep on reading to see can possibly happen next. This is a brilliant satire that pokes fun at people and major historical events.