Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All

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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? 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. Neither the receptionist nor the priest had any experience of how the housing market worked. Per person has spent his entire adult life sleeping behind a hotel lobby or in a camper-van. Johanna Kjellander’s knowledge of the same matter encompassed little more than her dad’s parsonage, a student-housing corridor in Uppsala, and her dad’s parsonage again (as a new graduate she’d had to commute between her childhood bedroom and her job, twelve miles away; this was the most freedom her dad would allow).” (p. 315) a b c d Wilson, Wayne (March 2000). "The Meaning of It All". American Humanist Association. Archived from the original on December 16, 2010 . Retrieved February 14, 2011. a b c d e Quigg, Chris. "The Man Who Loved Ideas". Fermilab. Archived from the original on July 21, 2011 . Retrieved February 14, 2011.

It’s not just hitman, priests and receptionists, none of whom have had particularly pleasing lives, who muse on these kinds of questions. A madcap new novel from the #1 internationally bestselling author of The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden

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A mordantly funny and loopily freewheeling novel about ageing disgracefully’ Sunday Times (on The Hundred-Year-Old Man)

a b "The Meaning of it All". complete review. Archived from the original on December 14, 2010 . Retrieved February 15, 2011. If only children could be free of all that crap previous generations had gathered up for them, he said, perhaps it would bring some clarity to their lives." A madcap new novel from the one-of-a-kind author of The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared and The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden. a b Lezard, Nicholas (March 25, 2000). "A Feyn romance". The Guardian. Archived from the original on March 4, 2022 . Retrieved February 14, 2011. 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 SwedenPure, ingenious fantasy . . . it’s “feel-good” set to stun level’ Guardian (on The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden)

Maybe you’ll find the answers you seek, and maybe you won’t – even with the happy ending of sorts that graces the book, no one gets to live a fairytale which is the way of things if we’re going to be brutally honest – but like Hitman Anders and his thoroughly pragmatic and often unwilling partners in life-changing crime, you may find that life has a way of serving you up just you need at the exact moment you figure it’s given up on you for good. Probably not by launching a ridiculously profitable hit man service, or fleeing into the wilds and not-so-wilds of Sweden in a campervan and dispensing money to deserving causes while you wage a hearts-and-minds campaign through the press, but who’s to say that wouldn’t work for you too? The new novel sees your characters searching for “the meaning of it all”. What is the meaning of it all for you? Granted the way they go about remedying things is a far cry from anything any of us are likely to try but the reality is everyone at some point has wondered if changing their life is possible and how one earth you’d go about it. 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.Hitman Anders may not have lived up to the author’s previous books (and it was strange to preview it in March when Jonasson was otherwise a summer read for me... these sentence structures belong in sunshine) – still I’m glad I read it. It may not win the author many new fans, but has enough of the formula to satisfy those who really liked both his earlier novels. It’s left me (and I daresay publishers) wondering whether Jonasson is ever going to produce another The Hundred-Year Old Man ever again, or change direction, or if this is pretty much it - but the narrative still kept me interested in what would happen to the characters, and aside from a few moments of cringing, it was relaxing and escapist, which is, after all, the purpose of books like this one. Jonasson’s real talent with a book of this nature, that actually does ask some fairly weight questions in amongst the quips, asides, and patently ludicrous but somehow believable situations, is that he neatly balances the serious with the silly in such a way that Hitman Anders never ever feels one joke disposable.