The Elephant Vanishes is a collection of 17 short stories, the title being the title of the last story by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. The stories were written between 1980 and 1991, and published in Japan in various magazines, then collections. The stories usually don’t follow a theme, but a theme of self-awareness can be found in most stories.
The contents of this compilation were selected by Gary Fisketjon (Murakami's editor at Knopf) and first published in English translation in 1993 (its Japanese counterpart was released later in 2005). Several of the stories had already appeared (often with alternate translations) in the magazines The New Yorker, Playboy, and The Magazine (Mobil Corp.) before this compilation was published. The stories mesh normality with surrealism, and focus on painful issues involving loss, destruction, confusion and loneliness.
‘Elephant Vanishes’, the last story, tells the story of an elephant that was tied in the center of Tokyo, with utmost security and yet it escapes. There are no leads to its whereabouts, and the narrator forms an opinion that it vanished. Stories like ‘Sleep’, ‘Barn Burning’ and ‘The Silence’ end with cliff-hangers and create a sense of suspense. Some stories also use a paranormal element, as in ‘The Dancing Dwarf’, The ‘Little Green Monster’, and ‘Sleep’.
