THE ELEPHANT VANISHES by Haruki Murakami...

THE ELEPHANT VANISHES by Haruki Murakami translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum & Jay Rubin (Vintage: $12; 327 pp.). The characters in these odd stories find themselves caught between conflicting cultures as they attempt to graft Western tastes and mores onto Japanese traditions. The cultural equivalent of 19th-Century “half-caste” pariahs, they pursue a neurotic existence in contemporary Tokyo. The husband and wife in “The Second Bakery Attack” give new meaning to the slogan “Big Mac Attack” when they play Bonnie and Clyde at MacDonald’s, but they can’t escape the Japanese aversion to violence, even during a robbery. The narrator of “Sleep,” looks back on her easy, meaningless existence and realizes “my footprints were being blown away before I even had a chance to turn and look at them.” Fans of Murakami’s “A Wild Sheep Chase” will enjoy this outre admixture of East and West.