The Accidental Further Adventures of The Hundred Year Old Man

 Author : Jonas Jonasson (Translated from the Swedish by Rachel Willson-Broyles

Publisher : 4^th Estate – London, Pages 434

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Excerpts :

( ) Harry Belafonte realised that Allen had never seen a tablet before and was delighted to demonstrate. The artist’s taxi had no more made it out of  sight before Allan turned to the manager and asked him to procure a tablet of the same sort. The black tablet became Allan’s most treasured possession. It was free to use since the hotel manager had instructed the staff to set it up with all the bells and whistles, linking the Sim card to the hotel, which found its telephone costs doubled, although no one understood why.

( ) Allan was correct: the gas did run out before land was in sight. The tank began to sputter and the flame danced irregularly for sometime before it went out completely. It was a gentle journey down to the surface of the Indian Ocean, which, that day, was practically a Pacific one. The balloon basket hit the water, plunging half a meter below the surface,

( ) Allan responded, ‘I remember it from my relative youth at Los Alamos in the United States. The Americans toiled day and night to build that atom bomb, until I had to step in and tell them what to do. But there isn’t a single word about that on the internet, is there?’

( ) President Leuthard had already been tired; after two minutes on the phone with the American president she was exhausted. ‘When we know, we will take the proper measures. The Swiss Confederation does, however, retain the right to its own decisions regarding national security.’ President Trump hung up without saying goodbye. ‘Two Swedes and a North Korean. That makes three Communists in a row,’ said President Trump. ‘Get that fucking Wallstrom over here right now, before Sweden takes over the whole world.’

( ) ‘Attaches Karlson and Jonson! Are you here already? Splendid!’ said Margot Wallstrom, as she strode towards them from the main entrance. ‘I’ve just come straight from lunch with the Supreme Leader. We talked almost exclusively about you, Mr Karlson, and he sends his kindest greetings to you both. ‘Eighteen minutes later, thirty-six minutes ahead of schedule, the Swedish minister for foreign affairs’ plane exited North Korean airspace, carrying two more passengers than it had when it landed two days earlier.

( ) ‘Who are you ?’ the president interrupted, turning to Allan.

‘Who am I? I’m Allan Karlson, as the minister said, I did not help North Korea. In fact it’s possible I threw a spanner in their works. In short, that’s who I am. I can, of course, tell you more.’

‘They say you receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom,’ said Donald Trump, ‘But that president is history. This one is going to take it back if you don’t answer my questions right. Take it back.’

‘Giving the medal back would be difficult. It vanished somehow in a submarine on the way to Leningrad in 1948. It’s possible that the Russians have been keeping it hidden since. You can always ask that guy in Moscow, Putin. I understand you’re on good terms.’

President Trump was thrown off balance. A submarine? 1948?

() The shop window was now arrayed with five coffins of solid pine, in white, pigeon blue, pink, olive green and grey. The market for coffins north of the northern suburbs of Stockholm, however seemed to be dead. It was a comfortable twenty-minute walk to Berglund’s . Julius stepped inside and asked for the prices of coffins.

‘Six thousand four hundred kroner apiece,’ said Therese Berglund.

His and Sabine’s coffins of solid pine had to be priced somewhere around fifteen thousand to break even. These Masonite coffins looked just as nice at half the price.

( ) Kim Jong-un had nagged President Putin nearly to death on the topic of how the Russians, with their global network of agents, ought to track down Karlson and slit his throat, but Putin was secretly amused by the old man. Imagine being more than a hundred years old, coming to Pyongyang and getting the little big man all worked up like that. Even if the old man hadn’t vanished, the president would have let him be.

( ) Each time the oxpecker twittered from the sky, everyone knew a herd of Cape buffalo had come too close for comfort. Those who weren’t already in a car climbed onto the nearest four-wheeled vehicle- onto the bonnet, the roof or someone’s lap. When the birds disappeared, the chaos returned to its original level. There was no reason to worry about lions or leopards. They slept during the day. Allan using Meitkini’s binoculars gave a running commentary from the front seat from warthogs to giraffes. Thousands of Tanzanians around them appeared to be preparing fires to sleep next to it. A fire, along with a guard armed with spear and club standing watch in two-hour shifts through the night, increased the chances of survival.

( ) Each person who paid five thousand shillings (two US dollars) receives a sip of the miracle drink, with Olekorinko’s blessings and incantations on top. Those who don’t pay get only the incantations. Besides he offered private consultations in his own tent, twenty minutes for a thousand dollars or sixty minutes for 2500. They booked the shorter version at three o’clock.

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My Take :  It seems that the commercial success of the first book, of this ‘Hundred Year Old Man’ prompted the author to write a sequel to it.

But the magic is missing and the story drags on. Happenings similar to the first book take the story’s character to different parts of the world in twenty-first century, but interest of the reader is not achieved.

You can go for this book if you like some unusual stuff.

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Subject type : Fiction

Narrative Style : Fair

Readability : Tedious

Reader’s Interest : Not maintained

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