Tab Article

Ratings: ★★★★★ (4.7/5)
Genre: Short Stories, Magical Realism, Japanese Literature

Book Review:
Haruki Murakami's ''The Elephant Vanishes'' is a treasure trove of short fiction, a collection that showcases the full range of his extraordinary imagination. It's a book that will make you laugh, unsettle you, and leave you marveling at his ability to find the strange and wonderful in the most ordinary of circumstances. The seventeen stories in this collection are classic Murakami. We meet a man whose life is thrown into disarray when his favorite elephant disappears from a local zoo. We follow a couple whose midnight hunger leads them to a bizarre and desperate act. We encounter a woman who becomes the object of a small, green monster's obsessive affection. We enter the sleepless world of a woman for whom the boundaries between reality and dream have dissolved. Murakami's prose is deceptively simple, with a deadpan, matter-of-fact tone that makes the most surreal events feel completely plausible. He has a genius for creating characters who are both ordinary and deeply strange, and for finding moments of profound insight in the most unlikely places. These stories are filled with his signature preoccupations: loneliness, longing, the mysteries of memory, and the strange connections that bind us to each other and to the world. As the Independent on Sunday noted, Murakami manages to make poetry while writing of contemporary life and emotions. It's a quality that is on full display in this collection. ''The Elephant Vanishes'' is a wonderful introduction to Murakami's work for newcomers, and an essential read for longtime fans. It's a book to be savored, one story at a time.