When a hot air balloon ride ends with a sea landing and an unexpected rescue from a North Korean ship, one hundred-year-old Allan Karlsson and his sidekick Julius find themselves in the middle of a diplomatic crisis of epic proportions.

Jonas Jonasson's picaresque tale of how one person's actions can have far-reaching-even global-consequences, written with the same light-hearted satirical voice as his bestselling debut novel, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared. On June 14th, 2007, the King and Prime Minister of Sweden went missing from a gala banquet at the Royal Castle. Later it was said that both had fallen ill: the truth is different. The real story...

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;...