村上春树，1949年生于日本兵库县，早稻田大学戏剧系毕业，1979年以第一部创作小说《听风的歌》得到当年日本的群像新人奖。获得野间文艺新人奖和谷崎润一郎奖的作品――《挪 威的森林》――迄今卖了超过700万本，使作者成为日本最畅销的作家。村上春树曾翻译F.s cott Fitzgerald，Paul Theroux，John lrving 及Raymond chandler的小说，九十年代 在美国普林顿大学和Tufts University任客座讲师。

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 everyday, the extraordinary in the ordinary. (20021018)