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Powell's Staff: New Literature in Translation: June 2022 (0 comment)
June is one of my favorite months, especially here in Portland, where the weather can be beautiful and sunny one minute and a gray downpour with threats of thunder the next. It’s important to always be prepared to take advantage of those rainy afternoons, with a good mug of tea and a great book. Below, we’ve rounded up some of the books in translation released this past month....
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Elephant Vanishes

by Haruki Murakami, Alfred Birnbaum, Jay Rubin
Elephant Vanishes

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ISBN13: 9780679750536
ISBN10: 0679750533
Condition: Standard


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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

With the same deadpan mania and genius for dislocation that he brought to his internationally acclaimed novels A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami makes this collection of stories a determined assault on the normal. A man sees his favorite elephant vanish into thin air; a newlywed couple suffers attacks of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald's in the middle of the night; and a young woman discovers that she has become irresistible to a little green monster who burrows up through her backyard.

By turns haunting and hilarious, The Elephant Vanishes is further proof of Murakami's ability to cross the border between separate realities — and to come back bearing treasure.

Review

"The narrators in these stories tend to accept what comes, no matter how bizarre, without acting. When a man discovers his wife keeps a shotgun and ski masks in the car, he asks no questions, but shrugs and thinks, 'Married life is weird.' When another man realizes he has just passed 'the 100% perfect girl' for him on the street, he keeps walking, too ruffled to try to track her down. And when another man teaching in a correspondence school visits a married pupil with a crush on him, they simply eat hamburger steaks and exchange pregnant glances. But despite their passivity, these characters speak with a casual profundity, transforming their seemingly banal stories to parables for our time." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)

Review

"These are beautifully written stories, often funny, always moving." Chicago Tribune

Review

"These stories...are warm with life, hopelessly — and, I would add, wonderfully — unstable." David Leavitt, The New York Times Book Review

Review

"A world-class writer who takes big risks....If Murakami is the voice of a generation...then it is the generation of Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo." Washington Post Book World

Review

"A seamless melding of Japanese cultural nuances with universal themes — in a virtuoso story collection....Remarkable evocations of a postmodernist world, superficially indifferent but transformed by Murakami's talent into a place suffused with a yearning for meaning." Kirkus Reviews

Review

"Eerie, unsettling....[A] wonderful combination of the bizarre and the mundane." Village Voice Literary Supplement

Review

"Murakami is one of the great Japanese masters, and his style is sexy, funny, mysterious, and always coolly deadpan." Details

Synopsis

Includes the story "Barn Burning" which is now the basis for the major motion picture Burning

In the tales that make up The Elephant Vanishes, the imaginative genius that has made Haruki Murakami an international superstar is on full display.

In these stories, a man sees his favorite elephant vanish into thin air; a newlywed couple suffers attacks of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald's in the middle of the night; and a young woman discovers that she has become irresistible to a little green monster who burrows up through her backyard. By turns haunting and hilarious, in The Elephant Vanishes Murakami crosses the border between separate realities--and comes back bearing remarkable treasures

Synopsis

In the tales that make up The Elephant Vanishes, the imaginative genius that has made Haruki Murakami an international superstar is on full display.

In these stories, a man sees his favorite elephant vanish into thin air; a newlywed couple suffers attacks of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald's in the middle of the night; and a young woman discovers that she has become irresistible to a little green monster who burrows up through her backyard. By turns haunting and hilarious, in The Elephant Vanishes Murakami crosses the border between separate realities--and comes back bearing remarkable treasures.

Includes the story Barn Burning, which is the basis for the major motion picture Burning.

Synopsis

Coming this October: Killing Commendatore, the much-anticipated new novel from Haruki Murakami

In the tales that make up The Elephant Vanishes, the imaginative genius that has made Haruki Murakami an international superstar is on full display.

In these stories, a man sees his favorite elephant vanish into thin air; a newlywed couple suffers attacks of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald's in the middle of the night; and a young woman discovers that she has become irresistible to a little green monster who burrows up through her backyard. By turns haunting and hilarious, in The Elephant Vanishes Murakami crosses the border between separate realities--and comes back bearing remarkable treasures


About the Author

Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and grew up in Kobe. He is the author of A Wild Sheep Chase; Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World; and Dance, Dance, Dance. He lives with his wife in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

4.7 3

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 4.7 (3 comments)

`
Monica Brown , October 30, 2014 (view all comments by Monica Brown)
Murakami is a master of the short story. Favorites include the strange and mythical story, 'The Dancing Dwarf' as well as the bizarre 'The Second Bakery Attack.' Classic slivers of Murakami prose delight and feel familiar like in 'The Last Lawn of the Afternoon' and 'Barn Burning.' It also features the beginning piece of my favorite book of his, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, in an isolated form. This is a book of stories that I like to pick up from time to time and read a story or two, a collection I took my time with.

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`
Kyle Kirkley , January 01, 2013
Stories that are both haunting and hilarious.

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`
sharif78 , May 20, 2007 (view all comments by sharif78)
The Elephant Vanishes (1993) is a collection of short stories by Haruki Murakami, one of the most popular writers in Japan. I enjoyed it more than After the Quake. I haven't read any of his novels yet. Murakami's style is very simple with a lighthearted tone yet he could paint a complex picture. While reading, I always expect he would explain certain things, but he never does, leaves the reader in a limbo. But that's his style, not the typical conflict-crisis-resolution format. One of my favorite stories is The Second Bakery Attack, in which a husband and wife hold up a McDonald's and steal 30 hamburgers, grilled for takeout, although the manager offers them money instead. The husband thought he was under a curse, when he robbed a bakery years ago. After they got married, the wife suggested that to get out of the curse he needs to rob another bakery. They could not find a bakery open after 2am, so McDonald's was the closest thing they can find, not a bakery but they have bread. Another one I liked was Lederhosen, very offbeat. Murakami shows how a pair of shorts could lead to the divorce of a long-married Japanese couple.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780679750536
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
06/28/1994
Publisher:
PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
Series info:
Vintage International
Pages:
336
Height:
.80IN
Width:
5.20IN
Thickness:
1.00
Number of Units:
1
Copyright Year:
1994
Series Volume:
PC-7014
UPC Code:
2800679750538
Author:
Haruki Murakami
Author:
Alfred Birnbaum
Author:
Jay Rubin
Subject:
Fiction
Subject:
Translations into english
Subject:
Social life and customs
Subject:
Japan
Subject:
Japan Social life and customs Fiction.
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Subject:
Stories (single author)
Subject:
Murakami, Haruki - Translations into English

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