The Elephant Vanishes

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

In 1978, Haruki Murakamiwas 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.