The Elephant Vanishes.

MURAKAMI, Haruki.

$1,800.00

Item Number: 138128

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.

First edition of this classic collection of stories, one of which was the basis for the 2018 acclaimed film Burning. Octavo, original boards. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author in the year of publication on the half-title page, “To Karen Haruki Murakami (in both Japanese and English) 5/6/93 Princeton, NJ.” Additionally signed three times by jacket designer Chip Kidd, once on the front panel, above Murakami’s signature and on the jacket rear panel. Fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Chip Kidd. Translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum and Jay Rubin.

In these stories, a man sees his favorite elephant vanish into thin air; a newlywed couple suffers attacks of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald’s in the middle of the night; and a young woman discovers that she has become irresistible to a little green monster who burrows up through her backyard. By turns haunting and hilarious, in The Elephant Vanishes Murakami crosses the border between separate realities—and comes back bearing remarkable treasures. “These stories show us Japan as it’s experienced from the inside. . . . [They] take place in parallel worlds not so much remote from ordinary life as hidden within its surfaces. . . . Even in the slipperiest of Mr. Murakami’s stories, pinpoints of detail flash out . . . warm with life, hopelessly–and wonderfully–unstable" (The New York Times Book Review).