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Murakami’s The Elephant Vanishes

Finished reading *Haruki Murakami’s ‘The Elephant Vanishes’* last night, the Dutch version of which contains only 6 out of the 17 stories in the English translation. I really enjoyed the title piece, but a couple of the other stories left me unsatisfied — especially ‘The Wind-up Bird And Tuesday’s Women’. This story ended up as the first chapter to my favourite Murakami novel, ‘The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle’. To be honest, I hated reading it again and couldn’t imagine how Murakami ever felt it stood alone.