Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji

Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji, written in Japan in the early eleventh century, is acknowledged to be one of Japan’s greatest literary achievements, and sometimes thought of as the world’s first novel. This introduction to the Genji sketches its cultural background, offers detailed analysis of the text, including language and style, and ends by tracing the history of its reception through nine centuries of cultural change. This book will be useful for survey courses in Japanese and world literature.