The Hundred Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson (2009)

Allan Karlsson, a resident of the Old People’s Home, is about to celebrate his 100^th year birthday.  It is an event of some importance considering that the Mayor himself will be attending.  Karlsson, however, has other ideas.  He is going to absent himself from his own party.

Karlsson jumps out of his bedroom window in his slippers and his great adventure begins. Before long, he is running around with a luggage filled with 50 million cash and  involved in several reported murders.  Soon, the police is in hot pursuit.

It turns out that Karlsson is not a stranger to adventures.  In his Life-Before-The Old People’s Home, he was an explosives expert and has been in and out of the big events of the past 100 years. He had a hand in exploding the first nuclear bomb, he’s met with Stalin, Truman, Mao Tse-tung, and even with Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung! For somebody who does not care for politics, he has gotten himself enmeshed in the political infightings in Spain, Iran, and Indonesia.

The book has two threads running parallel – one thread with the 100 year-old Karlsson and his newfound friends being hounded by the police and the other thread with the much younger Karlsson going around the world, drinking tequila with Truman and crossing the Himalayas, among other things.

The book is witty, hilarious, and downright irreverent. The recounting of how Russia attempted to kidnap Albert Einstein shows Jonasson’s absolutely brilliant dry humour.

The book is also a beautiful lesson on how to traverse 100 years of living: Be ready to take in stride both setbacks and successes. Banished to spend time at the Gulag? No problem. Karlsson, however, one day, says to himself that he’s had enough of it (there's no vodka in this part of Russia!) and walks out. Similar to how he jumped out of his bedroom window the day he turned 100 years old.

I've ranked this book as no. 1 among the books I've read in the first half of 2013.