I think each and every one of us should climb out of our own windows once or twice in our lives. I think those who are afraid of dying are those who have not lived enough. In my books you can climb out of the window in your fantasy. The bestselling novel from the author of The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden Together these two people, who share a distaste for the world in all its disappointing forms – their list of things they hate doesn’t shrink a little as the novel goes on and they realise that perhaps life does have something quite likable to offer them – and who believe there is no chance of anything good lasting long enough to change their circumstances for good, bond together, and with Hitman Anders embark on a zany search the length and breadth of southern Sweden in the search for the elusive meaning of it all. I honestly haven’t laughed as much at this kind of religious irreverence since I read God Knows, by Joseph Heller (who also wrote Catch 22). So the writer of this book, Jonas Jonasson, is in good company indeed. Well, that's for you to learn, but what you will have gathered is that this is a quite unusual plot. There really does seem no way to pin this down as being akin to anything else. Drink, lapsed religious types, vengeful gangsters and people permanently out of their comfort zone are all ripely given by Graham Greene's entertainments, but this doesn't read like them. It has the warm clarity, gentle character of comedy and over-arching humanist tone of Mitch Albom, but again the style isn't correct. This might well only be categorisable as a Jonas Jonasson book – this being the first of his three I've read I really couldn't properly say.

Incorrectly billed as a comedy by a desperate PR department, Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All is a dreary crime caper that thinks it’s clever by making the highly original observations that, 1) Christianity is a bit of a silly religion and 2) tabloid newspapers are trash. Who. Knew.k.a. φίλοι του μια παστόρισσα που δεν πιστεύει στο Θεό αλλά έγινε κληρικός γιατί την πίεζε ο πατέρας της να τιμήσει την οικογενειακή παράδοση και ένας ρεσεψιονίστας που για όλα κατηγορούσε τον παππού του που από εκατομμυριούχος πτώχευσε, αφήνοντας την οικογένειά του (δηλαδή τον πατέρα του, πολλά χρόνια προτού γεννηθεί αυτός) στην τύχη τους. Και ο Άντερς, μη φανταστείτε ότι είναι κακός άνθρωπος, απλά κάποια στιγμή παραφέρθηκε, συνδύασε αλκοόλ με χάπια, ξέρετε τώρα, ατυχήματα συμβαίνουν - και όταν αυτά καταλήγουν με ακέφαλους ή τρύπιους από σφαίρες ανθρώπους, σου βγαίνει το ρημάδι το όνομα χωρίς να φταις.... Having loved Jonas Jonasson's previous tomes "The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared" and "The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden" I was super excited to get my hands on his latest effort "Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All". Sadly, it was a bit of a disappointment.

Even the criminals, who really shouldn’t affect you one little bit except as fodder to propel the protagonists forward in the narrative, matter in their own way.

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As testament to Jonasson's breezy style, the opening chapter gives us the full life-story (including family history) of our first protagonist; a receptionist lumbered through circumstance with the somewhat silly name of Per Persson - "...not that it's impossible to be named Per Persson or, for that matter, Jonas Jonasson, but some might find it monotonous" - and a brief summary of the life and misfortunes of our titular Hitman, Johan Andersson. As double biographies go, they're concise, to say the least. Did I think it was funny? I guess so, but more like amusing than hilariously funny. Yes, it was zany. Maybe some of the hilariousness was lost in translation and different nationalities often have different senses of humour. To a Swedish person, the book is probably hilarious. To a British person, not so hilarious. Maybe it's because I'm used to Nordic noir and not so used to Swedish comedy. 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 prison—accidently collide with darkly hilarious results.

You’ve said previously that The One-Hundred-Year-Old Man took you 47 years to write. What was the catalyst that helped you complete it in the end? The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist". Open Library. May 5, 2010. Archived from the original on October 17, 2012 . Retrieved February 3, 2011. All in all, if you want to read a novel that doesn't take too much effort and, in a diverse way (considering the subject matter), does have a feel-good factor rather like watching a farce on television or in the theatre, then give this a go. Like the author’s previous outings, Hitman Anders was a low-effort read that rattled along at a fair pace. And once again there is that curiously flippant way of describing dark and painful events, no matter who they affect, which makes classic British understatement look like Italian melodrama. Having noticed similar in other Swedish authors’ light fiction, A Man Called Ove and, more so in The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend, I’m getting the impression that it may be a national thing, not just a Jonas Jonasson thing: Scandinavian stoicism. I like it, and it makes me feel a little more stoic whilst reading, even whilst I imagine it may offend or bewilder some other readers.

And it’s this innate humanity matched with some wry and often nonsensical observations that make Johansson’s books and particularly Hitman Anders such a rewarding read. While no author should just keep doing the same thing over and over again, to me this tale felt too far removed from Jonasson's previous style to have me falling in love with the characters. Whilst a lot of the things that I loved in Jonasson's other novels were present - quirky personalities, happy coincidences and a lot of heart - the moral compass of this tale was way off. Focusing more on hotel receptionist Per Persson and shamed priest Johanna Kjellerman than the titular Hitman, Jonasson chronicles their first encounter when the priest tries to rip off Persson, and it all goes downhill from there. The characters are all so morally corrupt, that no matter how much good they try to do, it always left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Their constant scamming and Robin Hood-esque redistributions of wealth, may appear at first glance admirable, but their singular motivation always seems to be their own financial gain, leaving the reader pretty much disliking everyone in the whole book. Apart from numerous scientific papers, Feynman also published The Feynman Lectures on Physics in 1964, which was based on lectures he had given to undergraduate students between 1961 and 1963. [3] Towards the end of his life, he edited two autobiographical books, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?, published in 1985 and 1988 respectively.