The Elephant Vanishes (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Haruki Murakami
- First Published: 1993
- Type of Plot: Magical Realism
- Time of Work: The 1990's
- Setting: Suburb of Tokyo
- Principal Characters: The narrator, A woman
- Genres: Short fiction
- Subjects: Memory, Fantasy, Loneliness, Work or workers, Japan or Japanese people, Comedy, Monsters, Urbanization
- Locales: Tokyo, Japan
The Story
The nameless narrator begins with a long, careful, and reflective examination of the event that inspired the story's title. He then continues in a more active vein, describing his personal encounter with an attractive, seemingly compatible woman at a business event. What transpires during this encounter reveals how deeply the mystery of the elephant's disappearance has affected him.
When the story opens, the narrator is sitting alone in his kitchen, drinking coffee and reading a newspaper. He discovers a news article about the disappearance of the town's...
[The entire page is 1575 words long]
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