The Tale of Genji - Paperback

by Murasaki Shikibu (Author)

Front Jacket

In the eleventh century Murasaki Shikibu, a lady in the Heian court of Japan, wrote the world's first novel. But The Tale of Genji is no mere artifact. It is, rather, a lively and astonishingly nuanced portrait of a refined society where every dalliance is an act of political consequence, a play of characters whose inner lives are as rich and changeable as those imagined by Proust. Chief of these is "the shining Genji," the son of the emperor and a man whose passionate impulses create great turmoil in his world and very nearly destroy him. This edition, recognized as the finest version in English, contains a dozen chapters from early in the book, carefully chosen by the translator, Edward G. Seidensticker, with an introduction explaining the selection. It is illustrated throughout with woodcuts from a seventeenth-century edition.

Back Jacket

This is a lively and astonishingly nuanced portrait of a refined society where every dalliance is an act of political consequence; a play of characters whose inner lives are as rich as those imagined by Proust.

Author Biography

Murasaki Shikibu, a lady in the Heian court of Japan, is best known as the author of The Tale of Genji-written in the eleventh century and universally recognized as the greatest masterpiece of Japanese prose narrative and possibly the earliest true novel in the history of the world.