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 to a twilight world of semi-consciousness in which anything seems possible - even death. In every one of the stories that make up The Elephant Vanishes, Murakami makes a determined assault on the normal. He has a deadpan genius for dislocating realities to uncover the surreal in the everyday, the extraordinary in the ordinary. How does Murakami manage to make poetry while writing of contemporary life and emotions? I am weak-kneed with admiration Independent on Sunday These stories show us Japan as it`s experienced from the Even in the slipperiest of