# Read the first page of The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson Read the opening of The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson free, no signup. On his hundredth birthday, a man escapes his nursing home out the window. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/the-100-year-old-man-who-climbed-out-the-window-and-disappeared-jonas-jonasson - Genre: Comic fiction - Year: 2012 - ISBN: 9781401324643 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9781443419116&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9781401324643 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9781401324643 ## The opening You might think he could have made up his mind earlier, and been man enough to inform his surroundings of his decision. But Allan Karlsson had never been given to pondering things too long. So the idea had barely taken hold in the old man’s head before he opened the window of his room on the ground floor of the Old Folks’ Home in the town of Malmköping, and stepped out—into the flower bed. This maneuver required a bit of effort, since Allan was 100 years old, on this very day in fact. There was less than an hour to go before his birthday party would begin in the lounge of the Old Folks’ Home. The mayor would be there. And the local paper. And all the other old people. And the entire staff, led by bad-tempered Director Alice. It was only the Birthday Boy himself who didn’t intend to turn up. Allan Karlsson hesitated as he stood there in the flower bed that ran along one side of the Old Folks’ Home. He was wearing a brown jacket with brown trousers and on his feet he had a pair of brown indoor slippers. He was not a fashion plate; people rarely are at that age. He was on the run from his own birthday party, another unusual thing for a 100-year-old, not least because even being 100 is pretty rare. Allan thought about whether he should make the effort to crawl back in through the window to get his hat and shoes, but when he felt his wallet in his inside pocket, he decided that it would suffice. Besides, Director Alice had repeatedly shown that she had a sixth sense (wherever he hid his vodka, she found it), and she might be nosing around in there even now, suspicious that something fishy was going on. Better to be on his way while he could, Allan thought, as he stepped out of the flower bed on creaking knees. In his wallet, as far as he could remember, he had a few notes saved—a good thing since it probably wouldn’t be free to go into hiding. He turned to take one last look at the Old Folks’ Home that—until a few moments ago—he had thought would be his last residence on Earth, and then he told himself that he could die some other time, in some other place. The 100-year-old man set off in his pee-slippers (so called because men of an advanced age rarely pee farther than their shoes), first through a park and then alongside an open field where a market was occasionally held in the otherwise quiet provincial town. After a few hundred yards, Allan went around the back of the district’s medieval church and sat down on a bench next to some gravestones to rest his aching knees. The piety in the area was not such that Allan worried about being disturbed. He noted an ironic coincidence. He was born the same year as a Henning Algotsson who lay beneath the stone just across from the bench. But there was an important difference—Henning had given up the ghost sixty-one years earlier. If Allan had been more curious he might have wondered what Henning died of, at the age of thirty-nine. But Allan did not get into other people’s business—if he could avoid it, which he usually could. Instead, he thought that he had probably been mistaken when he’d sat in the Old Folks’ Home, feeling as if he might as well be dead. However many aches and pains he suffered, it had to be much more interesting and instructive to be on the run from Director Alice than to be lying rigid six feet under. Upon which thought the Birthday Boy, despite his complaining knees, got up and said good-bye to Henning Algotsson and continued on his badly planned flight. ## Books with a similar feel - [The British Columbia Court of Appeal by Christopher Moore](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-british-columbia-court-of-appeal-christopher-moore.md) - [The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-eyre-affair-jasper-fforde.md) - [Emma by Jane Austen](https://uncovered.ink/read/emma-jane-austen.md) - [Stormy Weather by Carl Hiaasen](https://uncovered.ink/read/stormy-weather-carl-hiaasen.md) - [The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-luck-of-barry-lyndon-william-makepeace-thackeray.md) - [The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-adventures-of-huckleberry-finn-mark-twain.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). A short sample shown for reading and discovery. 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