The Elephant Vanishes, Haruki Murakami
The Elephant Vanishes, Haruki Murakami
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The Elephant Vanishes
Stories

Author: Haruki Murakami

Narrator: John Chancer

Unabridged: 10 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/06/2013

Synopsis

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.

About The Author

HARUKI MURAKAMI was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and one of the most recent of his many international honors is the Cino Del Duca World Prize, whose previous recipients include Jorge Luis Borges, Ismail Kadare, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Joyce Carol Oates.

Reviews

AudiobooksNow review by Sandy on 2008-08-07 09:13:45

The stories on these CD's take on two forms: either complete but banal or inexplicable and unsatisfying. The former are merely dull. The latter are extraordinarily compelling. They begin with unexpectedly odd events, e.g. a woman no longer requiring sleep, television deliverymen that no one can see, a phone call by an unknown woman trying to make an emotional connection in 10 minutes to a man who doesn't know her. But none of these stories are finished. This isn't the case of a story concluding while leaving the events in the story ongoing. Instead, each of these stories feels as though the author took a break for lunch and never came back as if he fully intended to write more but never got the chance. Thus, I found the stories, while interesting, very unsatisfying. I managed to make it through 6 of the 8 CD's before deciding that I'd really rather be listening to something else.

Goodreads review by S.Ach on February 18, 2024

You too can write like Murakami. Just remember these simple rules - 1) Think of something weird. Multiply the weirdness by 10. I haven't slept for last 16 nights and 17days. Today is the 17th night. I couldn't sleep. I tried. But failed. I typed in Google Search "Insomnia". It took me to the Christop......more

Goodreads review by Baba on October 02, 2022

Seventeen short stories by the Japanese master. With titles like 'Lederhosen', The Dancing Dwarf' and 'Sleep' there are some truly wonderful tales here, and each of them has 'deeper' meanings and open up emotive issues by way of their characters and plots. My personal favourite is 'Silence' where a......more

Goodreads review by Fiona on November 02, 2008

apathetic Every protagonist in Murakami's books (though, I've only read this and 'Norwegian Wood') are apathetic. They just float through their lives, never really caring about what is happening, or if there is anything they can do to fix it. I think to some readers this could be quite tedious, but th......more

Goodreads review by Liong on December 05, 2022

Many great stories and some of them are hard to digest. I may read it again next time. Overall, I enjoyed reading the story " A slow boat to China".......more

Goodreads review by Repellent on March 06, 2021

Siempre me cuesta tomar el impulso de empezar a leer libros de relatos, porque me cuesta mucho luego evaluar su conjunto. E incluso tratándose de Murakami, que es mi autor favorito, suelo tardar mucho más en leer sus colecciones, que sus novelas o ensayos. Además, una cosa que me ha descolocado a mi......more

Quotes

“These are beautifully written stories, often funny, always moving.” –Chicago Tribune

“Eerie, unsettling. . . . [A] wonderful combination of the bizarre and the mundane.” –Village Voice Literary Supplement

“Charming, humorous and frequently puzzling . . . The Elephant Vanishes [is] fun to read.” –The New York Times

“These stories show us Japan as it’s experienced from the inside. . . . [They] take place in parallel worlds not so much remote from ordinary life as hidden within its surfaces. . . . Even in the slipperiest of Mr. Murakami’s stories, pinpoints of detail flash out . . . warm with life, hopelessly–and wonderfully–unstable.” –The New York Times Book Review

“A stunning writer at work in an era of international literature.” –Newsday

“Enchanting…intriguing…all of these tales have a wonderfully surreal quality and a hip, witty tone. Mr. Murakami has pulled off a tricky feat, writing stories about people who are bored but never boring. He left me lying awake at night, hungry for more.” –Wall Street Journal

“The Elephant Vanishes, through [its] bold originality and charming surrealism, should win the author new readers in this country.” –Detroit Free Press

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