Jonas Jonasson · 2009 · road

Jonas Jonasson's 2009 comic bestseller, in which a sprightly centenarian absconds from his own birthday party and stumbles into a madcap crime caper across Sweden. Interleaved with the present-day chase is the story of Allan's century, a Forrest-Gump-like romp in which a humble explosives expert keeps blundering into the great events of the twentieth century. The route shown is the present-day escape; the flashbacks span the whole globe.

1. 1
   Malmkoping

   On the morning of his hundredth birthday, Allan Karlsson climbs out the window of his care home in his slippers and shuffles off to the bus station, fed up with the party.

2. 2
   Byringe

   At a disused railway station he is asked to mind a suitcase, and on impulse boards a train with it, not knowing it is stuffed with a criminal gang's cash.

3. 3
   Akers Styckebruk

   A picaresque chase across Sweden begins, gathering an unlikely band of companions and, eventually, an elephant.

4. 4
   Rottne

   Holed up in rural Smaland with bodies to hide and gangsters and police closing in, Allan's improbable luck holds, as it has for a hundred years.

5. 5
   Bali

   The gang slips out of the country, and Allan ends up where his extraordinary life always seems to lead, on a warm beach far away, a fitting end for a man whose century took him through the Spanish Civil War, the Manhattan Project and Stalin's gulags.