The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year Old Man by Jonas Jonasson
The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year Old Man by Jonas Jonasson follows on from The Hundred-Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared.
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In The Accidental Further Adventures Allan and his friend Julius, who accompanied Allan through the adventures of the previous book escaped a growing debt which they could not afford to pay and the boredom of life in Bali (apparently paradise becomes dull after a while) when they took a trip in a hot air balloon on Allan 101st birthday, landed in the Indian Ocean and were picked up by a North Korean ship that was smuggling uranium.
Luckily Allan knew enough about nuclear bombs to keep him and Julius alive during their meetings with the Supreme Leader of North Korea Kim Jong-Un, inventing an imaginary science which he called ‘hetisostat pressure’ which he promised would enrich North Korea’s uranium stash. Even more luckily for Allan and Julius, the Swedish UN Ambassador Margot Wallstrom was visiting North Korea at the same time and managed to get the pair on a plane to New York where President Donald Trump was waiting to meet them.
Allan had intended to give North Korea’s uranium to Trump, but after watching the president have a tantrum decided he was far too volatile to trust with the product and instead, used a diplomat to unwittingly deliver the lead-encased suitcase full of uranium to the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.
Allan and Julius then returned to Sweden and fell in with a woman who owned a corner store and a coffin shop. The three of them eventually found themselves on the run from an angry neo-Nazi.
Between the plot and Allan’s wit, this story exposed the fictionalised versions of various world-leaders as dangerous fools while promoting others as having the world’s best interests in their sights. The Accidental Further Adventures is much more of a commentary on world politics than The Hundred-Year Old Man was and although not as funny, was equally as clever. I think The Accidental Further Adventures would work as a stand-alone novel although it would be better to read the books in order to learn Allan’s history.
While poking fun at our world leaders, The Accidental Further Adventures also helped me to see the funny side of current events that are frightening on the news. The fictional characters seemed equally as real as the (fictionalised) real people used in the book. Most worryingly, although I was highly entertained by this story, I’m now wondering to what extent voters in the western world are manipulated by external forces when making the decisions which affect their countries.
I got on to this author following a recommendation from Honey-Bunny and haven’t looked back. Can’t wait to find out what Allan gets up to when he turns 102.
I’m going to take a short break from blogging as work is taking up a lot of my attention lately and I’ve fallen behind on my reading. (I blame Tom Jones…)
See you when I’ve caught up.
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