Around the time when Jim Morrison sang "Light My Fire" and Paul McCartney "Long and Winding Road," Haruki Murakami's first-person narrator encounters the "100% girl" and carelessly lets her go. He hardly tries to dissuade his sister from her exceedingly sensible fiancé, finds solace in virtuoso lawn mowing to cope with an unfaithful girlfriend, works in a factory that produces artificial elephants, and dreams of a wonderfully dancing dwarf whose dangerous abilities he borrows. Murakami's laconic stories revolve around what was once called fate—a perhaps self-created, always surprisingly shimmering power—they have delighted his German-speaking readers just as they had previously captivated millions of Japanese readers.