The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared

by Jonas Jonasson

The day before, his mother had marched in the May Day procession in Flen and demonstrated on behalf of women’s suffrage, an eight-hour working day, and other utopian demands.

She told Allan philosophically that it was what it was, and that in the future whatever would be would be.

Things are what they are, and whatever will be will be. That meant, among other things, that you didn’t make a fuss, especially when there was good reason to do so:

abandoning the whole idea of Never Again, but Caracas happened to have a Colombian comrade with a flexible conscience and dubious friends, and after one thing and another, Sweden (through Never Again) became the

or

(Allan momentarily forgot that he had blown the

Life worked in such a way that right was not necessarily right, but rather what the person in charge said was right.

weekdays and an hour later on weekends. Lunch was at 11:15, coffee at 15:15, and supper at 18:15. If you were out and didn’t keep track of the time and came home

had been exciting, the entire journey, but nothing lasts forever, except possibly general stupidity.