A reluctant centenarian much like Forrest Gump (if Gump were an explosives expert with a fondness for vodka) decides it's not too late to start over . . .

After a long and eventful life, Allan Karlsson ends up in a nursing home, believing it to be his last stop. The only problem is that he's still in good health, and in one day, he turns 100. A big celebration is in the works, but Allan really isn't interested (and he'd like a bit more control over his vodka consumption). So he decides to escape. He climbs...

From the author of the international bestseller The 100-Year-Old-Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, a brilliant satirical novel set in modern Sweden--a story of idealism and fanaticism, gangsters and entrepreneurs, sensationalism and spirituality, that explores the values that matter in contemporary life.

In a former brothel turned low-rent hotel, the lives of three unusual strangers--a former female priest, recently fired from her church; the ruined grandson of an ex-millionaire working as a receptionist; and Killer-Anders, a murderer newly released from...