Geriatic reading: "The Hundred-Year-Old Man: Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared" by Jonas Jonasson

Nordic literature (TV series too, at that) is supposed to be dark, introverted stuff, right? Well, The Hundred-Year-Old Man: Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared is not dark at all, but a joyous geriatric romp through the Swedish countryside in the company of a motley crew of ageing and really-not-that-bad crooks, led, bizarrely by our hero, the 100-year old Allan Karlsson. After he absconds from his old people's home, just before his 100h birthday party is due to begin, steals a suitcase full of drug money and hits the road to nowhere in particular, events continually conspire to expand his band to include an unlikely selection of characters up to and including an escaped zoo elephant.

The vicissitudes of the group, on the run from law enforcers and law-breakers alike, take on the nature of a Swedish road-trip, complete with a couple of relatively harmless murders. But this is all less than half the story, for much of the book is spent in flashback, telling us the past of Allan Karlsson - a past which spans pretty much the entire twentieth century.

Turns out that Allan Karlsson is a kind of long-haul Swedish Forrest Gump, an idiot savant with a knack of being where the action is, hobnobbing with world leaders and incidentally taking a decisive hand in pretty much everything from the Spanish Civil War, through the invention of the atom bomb and Mao's Great March to Reagan's Star Wars programme. Karlsson is on cordial (usually vodka-drinking) terms with two US presidents, Mao (and Mrs Mao), General Franco, Kim Il-Sun and Albert Einstein's not very clever half brother, to name but a few. Pretty much the only one the avowedly apolitical Karlsson cannot get along with, vodka consumption notwithstanding, is Joseph Stalin, who he finds over-sensitive and lacking in human warmth. Besides, that encounter ends badly, with Karlsson spending six years in the Gulag for a minor faux pas.

Over the book's not inconsiderable, but eminently readable length, the flashbacks and the road trip converge, as the forces of law and order converge on the unlikely gang and Karlsson gravitates slowly back to his homeland. What happens then, well, really confirms what we have come to expect of our improbable hero.

Is this all supposed to have a deeper meaning? Well, yes, there's satire; yes, there's moral relativism; yes, there's a quizzical eye cast on world history, but really this is just fun. A lot of fun.

Recommendation? This is one to take to the beach for your summer reading. You can't fail to enjoy it (unless you think it is all really a bit too silly) and it'll go by in a flash. Ibsen it ain't, but if you're up a bit of clever Swedish fun, give it a go.