When Jonas Jonasson wrote The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared the novel became an instant hit in his native Sweden and an unexpected bestseller in the rest of the world.
The comic misadventures of a centenarian who escapes from a nursing home, pinches a suitcase of money, and meets key political figures of the 20th century, some of whom are in his debt, all while on the run from a criminal gang took Scandinavian fiction in a light-hearted direction, away from the dark thrillers of Stieg Larsson, Jo Nesbo and Henning Mankell.
But it would be wrong to think The Hundred-Year-Old Man was written all for laughs. Jonasson created his hero Alan Karlson as a guide to ''the most terrible century of them all" in the vague hope "mankind would remember its wrongdoings a bit better and not always repeat them''.
His new novel, Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All also has oddball characters and implausible plots involving murder and mayhem. And, buried beneath it all, the author's lingering unease about the fate of mankind.
The story begins at the Sea Point Hotel, a former brothel, where a hapless former assassin comes to live after serving consecutive prison terms for murder. There Hitman Anders meets Per Persson, the hotel's downbeat receptionist, and a wily defrocked priest who doesn't believe in God. Persson and the priest hatch a business plan to become Anders' go-betweens with the criminal underworld.
The unorthodox arrangement proceeds nicely until Hitman Anders finds Jesus, and goes on strike. Anders is a violent killer but is not, Jonasson suggests, his most amoral character. That honour lies with his manipulators.
"Take the receptionist, for example," Jonasson says. "He blames his many years dead grandfather for his own situation. It's not the receptionist's fault that he's a kind of failure in life, then consequently he's not responsible for his actions, therefore he can do all these bad things. That is scary and everywhere around us in the world. We have this famous Austrian guy who in the 1930s blamed and pointed out the Jews with this scary result."
Humour, Jonasson says, is useful in pointing out mankind's foibles. Were the Middle East's political leaders to exercise levity and self-distance, some of the world's centuries-old conflicts could be solved. "It's hard for us to laugh together and then go out and kill each other."
Yet Jonasson struggles to define his brand of humour. Feted at a Swedish book festival, he was once approached by a reader who had put down Jonasson's debut book after 70 pages. "What's so funny?" he asked.
"The point," says the author, "is how can we explain what is funny to someone who doesn't understand? And vice versa, why explain what is funny to someone who is laughing?"
Jonasson climbed out his own window twice to become a successful author.
A reporter for 10 years at The Express, Jonasson went on to start his own media consultancy business, built it into a company of 100 employees and then sold it for a small fortune. He moved to the Swiss-Italian border, a rich man, to sit "under a palm tree" only to discover idleness didn't suit him. "The closest way back to my identity was to finally finish that manuscript that was 130 pages and had been in the box for ages," Jonasson says.
His only goal was to sell 3000 copies, enough for a second book deal. "Then I got published and sold 40 million copies. That was a nice bonus."
Jonasson is often asked where he gets his characters.
''I collect characters from real life, and destinies and store them in my head," he says. "I choose them like from a library when I create my characters but I swear I don't exaggerate them."
His neighbour, a few kilometres from where he lives on the island of Gotland, is a chicken farmer from whom Jonasson buys his hens. ''He also runs a go-kart track, he owns his own museum, he is a doctor in the natural economy, he is licensed in medical hypnosis, he is a judo teacher and a composer."
In his author's note Jonasson thanks God for letting him "borrow" Him but quickly admonishes Him for not working harder to convince His followers not to take Him too seriously.
"So that we have reason to laugh more than we cry," he writes. "Is that too much to ask? RSVP."
Jonasson hasn't heard back: "It might be that God is still considering the answer."
Linda Morris is on Facebook and Twitter @LindaMorrissmh
Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All
Jonas Jonasson
Fourth Estate, $29.99
