The Elephant Vanishes: Stories

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.





Some of the stories in this collection originally appeared in the following publicatons: The Magazine (Mobil Corp.): 'The Fall of the Roman Empire, the 1881 Indian Uprising, Hitler's Invasion of Poland, and the Realm of the Raging Winds' (in a previous translation; translated in this volume by Alfred Birnbaum), The New Yorker: 'TV People' and 'The Wind-up Bird and Tuesday's Women' (translated by Alfred Birnbaum), 'The Elephant Vanishes' and 'Sleep' (translated by Jay Rubin), and 'Barn Burning' (in a previous translation; translated in this volume by Alfred Birnbaum) Playboy: 'The Second Bakery Attack' (translated by Jay Rubin, January 1992).
 
The elephant vanishes / stories by Haruki Murakami; translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum and Jay Rubin.—1st Vintage International ed.