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The Elephant Vanishes

  • Imprint: Vintage

  • ISBN: 9780099448754

  • Length: 336  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 21mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 234g

  • RRP: £9.99

The Elephant Vanishes

A dizzying short story collection that displays Murakami's genius for uncovering the surreal in the everyday, the extraordinary within the ordinary

*Featuring the story ‘Barn Burning’, the inspiration behind the Palme d’Or nominated film Burning*

When a man's favourite elephant vanishes, the balance of his whole life is subtly upset. A couple's midnight hunger pangs drive them to hold up a McDonald's. A woman finds she is irresistible to a small green monster that burrows through her front garden. An insomniac wife wakes up in a twilight world of semi-consciousness in which anything seems possible - even death.

In every one of these stories Murakami makes a determined assault on the normal.

  • Imprint: Vintage

  • ISBN: 9780099448754

  • Length: 336  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 21mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 234g

  • RRP: £9.99

Reviews

  • How does Murakami manage to make poetry while writing of contemporary life and emotions? I am weak-kneed with admiration

    Independent on Sunday

  • Enchanting...intriguing... All of these tales have a wonderfully surreal quality and a hip, witty tone

    Wall Street Journal

  • All the stories take place in parallel worlds not so much remote from ordinary life as hidden within its surfaces: secret alleys that afford unexpected - and unsettling - views

    New York Times

  • Like the best thriller fiction, it nags you with the sensation that Something Nasty is about to happen

    Sunday Times

  • Most collections of short stories work by the interplay of different voices. This one offers the more satisfying rewards of a novel: unity of tone and a richness of recurring detail that creates its own texture: spaghetti, lawns, hamburgers, beer-drinking, kid sisters, Sunday afternoons, a man's name

    Independent

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About the Author

Haruki Murakami

In 1978, Haruki Murakami was twenty-nine and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers' award and was published the following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, that turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon. In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and Men Without Women, Murakami's distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring his place as one of the world's most acclaimed and well-loved writers.

Haruki Murakami

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Recommendations

Book your holiday: Tokyo

Tokyo has inspired all manner of writers, from home and abroad, seeking to evoke its unique atmosphere over the years.
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Competitions

Win a VINTAGE Japanese book bundle
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Extracts

Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami

Read an extract from the epic new novel by the internationally acclaimed and bestselling author of 1Q84, Norwegian Wood and Kafka on the Shore.

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