Books like The Elephant Vanishes
Seventeen early stories, from newlyweds who hold up a McDonald's in the middle of the night to a housewife who has stopped sleeping altogether.
Explore books like this on the map12 books for readers of The Elephant Vanishes
Hear the Wind Sing
Murakami's debut: in the summer of 1970, a college student home on break drinks beer with his friend the Rat at J's Bar, meets a girl with nine fingers and listens to the radio, learning how to be alone.
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Twenty-four stories from across his career, among them a waitress granted one wish on her twentieth birthday and a monkey in Shinagawa that steals people's names.
No One Belongs Here More Than You
Sixteen stories about lonely, awkward people reaching for one another in odd ways, among them a woman who teaches swimming lessons to elderly neighbours on her kitchen floor.
Convenience Store Woman
A convenience store worker in Tokyo has organised her entire life around her job, and everyone who tries to 'fix' her only makes things worse.
Parakeet
The week before her wedding, a woman known as the Bride is visited by her dead grandmother in the form of a parakeet, who tells her to find the estranged brother she has not seen in years.
The Box Man
A nameless man cuts a window in a cardboard box, puts it over his head and begins to live inside it, writing the notebook the reader holds.
The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God
Short, strange, funny stories from Israel, among them the novella Kneller's Happy Campers, set in an afterlife for people who took their own lives.
Palm-of-the-Hand Stories
Seventy very short stories Kawabata wrote across his life, few longer than two pages, of chance meetings, love, death and the turning seasons.
number9dream
Eiji Miyake, a young man from a small island, comes to Tokyo to find the father he has never met, and his search slides between reality, daydreams and video games.
Bliss Montage
Eight surreal stories about women in flight from the past: one lives in a house with her husband and all of her ex-boyfriends, another takes a drug that makes her disappear.
The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
Bender's first collection of short, strange fables, among them a man whose lover is going through reverse evolution and a girl with a hand made of fire.
Death Valley
With her father in intensive care after an accident, a novelist from Los Angeles checks into a Best Western in Death Valley to hike alone, and the desert begins to open up in ways she cannot explain.