Synopses & Reviews
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
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.