A novel that establishes the author's reputation with a large audience tour-de-force of comic satire on sex and the American ways of life.

In the title story of this collection of twelve, which established Carver's reputation as a master story teller, the hand of a blind man guides the hand of a sighted man as together they draw the cathedral the blind man can never see.

In these haunting, hilarious stories Murakami once again makes a determined assault on the normal. A man's favourite elephant simply vanishes; a couple suffering midnight hunger pangs hold up a McDonalds; and a woman finds she is irresistible to a green monster that burrows through her garden.

Erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity's dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us.

The story of a man, a girl, her ears and a very special sheep. It is a world where people sweat about their careers, drink too much, and drift through broken marriages. The protagonist is an advertising executive who finds himself drawn into an elaborate quest for a mysterious sheep.

Combining an offbeat cast of characters with Murakami's idiosyncratic prose, this novel is an assault on all the senses, a murder mystery that is also philosophical speculation, and a dark fable of advanced capitalism.