Review – The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami (Dutch version)
This was one weird book. It’s kinda like a Delvaux-painting. It’s It’s surrealistic, which means you don’t get it entirely, or maybe I didn’t get it entirely. I looked up some analyses about the short stories, but that didn’t clear much up for me. It’s a real special genre, but I like it. Maybe you don’t HAVE to get it.

So, the book contains 6 short stories (the English version contains more)
The secondary bakery attack: a woman suspects there’s a curse on her husband. They wake up in the middle of the night and have the worst hunger in their lives. He once (when he was young) tried to rob a bakery, but in the end he didn’t really. So they decide to make it right: they are going to rob a bakery right now.
TV people: a man is at home and suddenly a few little people walk in and put a tv on the dresser. When his wife comes home, she doesn’t see they have a tv now. He meets the “TV-people” some times more, but he seems to be the only one that notices them.
The dancing dwarf: a man dreams about a dwarf who is an incredibly good dancer. He wants to impress a girl from his work, who is a good dancer as well, and he makes a deal with the dwarf. He lets him take over his body to impress the girl and if the man can hold his mouth fort he entire time, the dwarf promises to leave his body again afterwards.
Barn burning: a man befriends a much younger, adventurous woman. After she leaves for Beirut for a couple of years, she returns with a boyfriend. One afternoon, they come and visit the man. The smoke some weed and after the girl went to take a nap, the boyfriend confesses to the man that he likes to burn barns from time to time.
The elephant vanishes: a city took over an elephant after the local Zoo goes broke. The main character is obsessed by the elephant. He visits him every day and collects every newspaper that’s about the elephant. After a year, the elephant disappears.
The wind-up bird and Tuesday’s women: a man gets a phonecall that is sexually tinted and he hangs up the phone immediately. Afterwards he does some chores his wife gave him. He goed to look for their cat who disappeared. He winds up in a garden with a young woman.

Most of the stories are quite unsettling, even though you don’t know exactly why.
I especially liked Barn burning, The dancing dwarf and The elephant vanishes.
The last short story (the wind-up bird) is apparently the first chapter of another book of his, which I’m definitely going to read.