The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared characters

Appears from the start

A Swedish explosives expert who leaves his nursing home through a window on his hundredth birthday rather than attend the celebration arranged for him. Allan is calm, literal-minded, and almost entirely uninterested in politics, although chance and his practical knowledge have repeatedly placed him beside political leaders and world-changing events.

Appears from the start

The manager of Allan's nursing home in Malmköping. Director Alice organizes his hundredth-birthday party and is alarmed to discover that its guest of honor has vanished only minutes before officials and local press are due to arrive.

First appears in chapter 2

A young member of the criminal gang Never Again who orders Allan to watch a large wheeled suitcase at the bus station. His threatening manner has little effect on Allan, who departs with the case when his bus arrives.

First appears in chapter 3

An elderly petty criminal living alone in an abandoned station at Byringe. Julius welcomes Allan, helps investigate the stolen suitcase, and responds to the dangerous owner who follows it with a mixture of cunning and improvised violence.

First appears in chapter 4

The police officer assigned to find Allan after the nursing-home disappearance grows into a possible kidnapping case. Aronsson is patient and methodical, but the contradictory evidence left by Allan's expanding journey repeatedly defeats any simple explanation.

First appears in chapter 6

A hot-dog-stand proprietor who has spent years taking university courses without completing a degree. Benny describes himself as nearly qualified in a remarkable range of subjects, making his broad but unfinished expertise unexpectedly useful when he joins Allan and Julius.

Also known as The Beauty

First appears in chapter 10

An outspoken woman living on an isolated farm with an assortment of animals. Gunilla shelters Allan's group, cares deeply for her elephant Sonya, and quickly forms a bond with Benny while refusing to be impressed by the dangerous men pursuing them.

First appears in chapter 10

Gunilla's elephant and the most unusual resident of her rural property. Sonya is affectionate toward her keeper, intimidating to intruders, and too large for the fugitives to leave behind when their journey continues.

Also known as The Boss

First appears in chapter 11

The leader of the small criminal organization Never Again. He wants the suitcase Bolt lost and directs the search for Allan and Julius, believing ordinary intimidation should be enough to recover the gang's property.

First appears in chapter 15

Albert Einstein's less celebrated fictional half-brother, whom Allan meets during imprisonment in the Soviet Union. Herbert is amiable but spectacularly poor at the kind of abstract reasoning associated with his surname, and he becomes Allan's companion in an improbable escape.

First appears in chapter 19

An Indonesian woman who meets Allan and Herbert after their arrival in Bali. Amanda's confidence greatly exceeds her formal education, but a chain of misunderstandings and political accidents rewards that confidence with extraordinary public authority.

First appears in chapter 23

A Soviet physicist whom Allan meets during the Cold War. Popov becomes both friend and counterpart in an intelligence arrangement that Allan approaches with the same lack of ideology he has brought to every other encounter with governments.