Using 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 finish from the World, Haruki Murakami makes this collection of stories a determined assault on the normal. A man views his preferred elephant vanish into thin air; a newlywed few suffers attacks of food cravings that drive them to carry up a McDonald’s in the middle of the night; and a woman discovers that she’s become amazing to on the subject of The Elephant Vanishes: Tales a little green monster who burrows up through her back garden.

By turns haunting and hilarious, The Elephant Vanishes is further proof Murakami’s capability to mix the border between distinct realities — also to come back bearing treasure.

A number of the tales in this collection originally appeared in the next publicatons: The Magazine (Mobil Corp.): ‘The Fall of the Roman Empire, the 1881 Indian Uprising, Hitler’s Invasion of Poland, as well as the Realm from the Raging Winds’ (within a earlier translation; translated in this volume by Alfred Birnbaum), THE BRAND NEW Yorker: ‘Television People’ and ‘The Wind-up Bird and Tuesday’s Women’ (translated by Alfred Birnbaum), ‘The Elephant Vanishes’ and ‘Rest’ (translated by Jay Rubin), and ‘Barn Burning’ (in a prior translation; translated in this volume by Alfred Birnbaum) Playboy: ‘The Second Bakery Strike’ (translated by Jay Rubin, January 1992).

The elephant vanishes / stories by Haruki Murakami; translated from japan by Alfred Birnbaum and Jay Rubin.-1st Classic International ed.