The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man

Hardly any other book can boast of having Kim Jong-Un, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Angela Merkel as fictional characters. Mr. Jonasson's latest opus is hilarious and at times thought provoking, and the narrator is having an absolute blast speaking English with many accents. Yet one can't help noticing that Jonasson's “signature thing” of portraying misfits on the loose is wearing out its charm. His excuses for the sequel to the adventures of Allan Karlsson, which he voices at the very beginning of the novel, are not particularly convincing and – to my taste – completely unnecessary. If you feel like having another go with your character, just do it – and if it's good enough, the public will have no choice but love it. Alan has a talent for getting himself in the soup and emerging unscathed no matter how crazy the circumstances are. And Jonasson is good at coming up with such circumstances, even if at times they seem repetitive. What didn't work for me more than anything in this novel was the fact that the author decided to comment on “here and now” - something that journalists are good at, but not so much fiction writers. There were moments in the book when I felt like I was reading a piece written by a staff humorist in a liberal newspaper or watching Steven Colbert saying for the 1000th time how “smart” the 45th US president is. Nothing particularly wrong with that – the novel is readable and listenable, but sadly not original. I couldn't get rid of the feeling that I have heard all that Jonasson had to say in this book many times before and even his 101-year-old unbreakable character can't bring much life into it.