Haruki Murakami, a Japanese novelist, famous for his fictional writing, is the writer of the great novel “The Elephant Vanishes.” You may or may not be familiar with the works of Murakami, but if you do read his novels, you already know it’s a great book.

‘The Elephant Vanishes’ is a collection of various short stories which is filled with mystery. All of these stories will make you scratch your brain and think about your life every time you finish reading one. It is the magic of Murakami’s books. In his writings, readers are made to create their own conclusion as the mystery will always remain a mystery. The stories are about how a person’s life can change from one small mistake and that life doesn’t end up how you think it would.

Let me give a spoiler of one of my favourite chapters of this book which is ‘The Dancing Dwarf.’ In this chapter, a person finds a dancing dwarf in his dream and it is the kind of dream that feels too real but deep down you already know it’s a dream. The dwarf is just too good at dancing and the person feels drunk just by watching him dance. He later talks about this dancing dwarf to a person at his workplace.  The workplace is quite interesting as well but I won’t spoil the fun for you. So, the person to whom he talks has already heard about this dwarf from an old man and hence he goes to find out more about this dwarf. He learns that there used to be the same kind of dwarf he saw in his dream in his workplace who was taken by the king because of his exceptional dancing skills. There were also rumours that the king was killed by that dwarf.

 Later on, he sees the same dwarf in his dream and the dwarf makes a deal with him that the dwarf will take over his body and dance in front of the girl he wants to impress but in a condition that he won’t speak a single word, otherwise the body will forever belong to the dwarf.  Later on, dwarf tries to make him speak a lot but he doesn’t and the deal is completed as well when he dances in front of everyone in the workplace and impresses the girl.

But a twist occurs when everybody thinks that the person is ‘the dancing dwarf’ and soldiers search for him everywhere to punish him. The dwarf tries to convince him to take over his body but he doesn’t let him and the story ends. Now the question is, will he let the dwarf take over his body? If he doesn’t, he will probably get killed and if he does, he will no longer have control over his body. What do you think? What choice will he make?

This was just one chapter of this book. There are many more chapters left which are full of emotional roller-coasters and mysteries. I recommend everybody to read this book and it is also available in UGSS library. Please share your experience if you do read this book.

Thank you.

By: Dikshya Khiuju, Management (L2)