Jonas Karlsson Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Jonas Karlsson
Jonas Karlsson was born March 11, 1971 in Sweden, and is an author and an actor.

In the year 2005, he made his debut as a playwright, which earned him rave reviews from critics and audiences alike. Spurred on by the joys of writing for the stage, he started writing fiction.

In 2004, Jonas won a Guldbagge Award for Best Actor for a movie he did called “Details”.

He got the idea for “The Room” while acting. He was acting in a play, and during one part, there is a lot of time where his character was off stage. He would sit in the wings just watching his colleagues on stage, leaning against the wall. One evening he was sitting there, it struck him that the wall seemed a bit short on his side when compared to the other side. Which was the hall to the Main Stage, where there was a big sofa where the actors sit and talk about one another. He walked back and forth them and it wound up not being on the other side.

It got him fantasizing that there was a secret room there somewhere. He was imagining Ingmar Bergman sitting all alone, writing his tiny black book. After that performance, he went around the corner and found an old smoking room that he never once noticed in all of the years he had worked at the theater. Then the idea was there in his head. Then he just began writing. At the time he had no clue that the room would become even more secret.

When he started, he only had the bit where Bjorn finds a room. Jonas put himself into his shoes and, while the character began to take shape, he started to become special. Jonas had the entire story set in his mind, he tried changing the story to third person since it was difficult to describe just how the people around Bjorn react to him. It proved to not be so easily done.

He felt like it was exposing Jonas, saying here is a crazy guy and look at the odd stuff he does. He realized that for the story to work, it had to all be experienced through his eyes. Plus, he finds it intriguing to learn gradually that your narrator isn’t to be trusted.

Jonas finds that the theater has taught him the most important lessons that he has ever learned about writing. It is very good for writing, because you must spend a ton of time on a text. You must analyze it, read it out loud, learn it by heart, and understand what is being said between each line.

He thinks his writing style could be described like that of an actor’s, since an actor doesn’t want too much stage direction. They just want the meaning to be felt in between each line.

He loves the feeling of the freedom in the writing process, just sitting back and writing. Often times, he starts with some dialogue or a situation that he thinks is intriguing. Then he continues to write and sees what happens. It can turn into nothing, but other times it does turn into a short story. Pretty rarely, it turns into something as lengthy as a novel. It just depends on what he discovers along the way, and if he finds it at all exciting to keep on.

To him, it is like a jazz musician and beginning on a piece of music, and just not knowing what is going to happen, he just has to hang on.

With his stories, he does his best not to have a specific message or an agenda. He doesn’t want to have some answers for his readers to find. For him, one of the best things about the response to his novel “The Room”, is the number of people telling him with confidence what the book is truly about. He found that no two interpretations have been exactly alike.

“The Invoice” is a stand alone novel and was released in the year 2016. As a passionate film buff, our protagonist’s life revolves around his part-time job working at a video store, the company of some precious friends, and a daily routine that usually ends with a movie and a pizza in his treasured and small space located in Stockholm.

When he gets an astronomical invoice from some random national bureaucratic agency, everything is going to tumble down into madness while he calls up the hotline day and night to figure out just why he has gotten the largest bill in the whole country.

What exactly is the price of a cherished memory? How much would anybody pay for a gorgeous summer day? How is our carefree idealist, who is content with so little and no chance of paying anything back, going to find a way out of this mess?

Readers found this to be a feel good and sweet story, and how Karlsson illuminates the great things about the life of the narrator and showing how lucky and happy he is without realizing it. The book makes you think, is very charming, and is highly intriguing. Fans liked how this presents the reader with some outlandish idea and liked seeing how everything plays out.

“The Circus” is a stand alone novel and was released in the year 2019. Jobsworth Bjorn begins a new career and expects he will progress fast with his efficiency and meticulousness. Only he gets the recognition that he deserves while in the Room which, as it happens, only he is able to visit.

Next, one man with an apparently unremarkable life: a tiny flat, a job working in a video store, no partner, a good friend, and a nice ice cream shop close by. He gets a huge invoice for his “experienced happiness”. Unable to pay up, he sets off to discover to find out how, exactly, his happiness bill was calculated.

Finally, two old friends decide to go to a circus together. Mangnus vanishes during a magic trick, our hero is consumed with the need to locate him.