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 everday, the extraordinary in the ordinary.