The Tale of Murasaki

The most famous work of Japanese literature is the eleventh-century Tale of Genji by a woman of the imperial court. Out of the life and work of Murasaki Shikibu, arguably the world's first novelist, Liza Dalby has woven a delicate and irresistible fiction. She evokes Murasaki's close family, the men and women she loved, the vortex of high politics she was drawn into at court, the way in which Murasaki came to write her masterpiece, and above all the relationship to her own fictional creation, the Shining Prince Genji. Piecing together existing fragments of diary and poems, Dalby frames Murasaki's words and images in a gorgeous work of literary archaeology, where the subtle reconstruction blends with eleventh-century sensibilities, manners, fashions and preoccupations, and includes the imaginary lost final chapter of Murasaki's magnum opus. The result is a vivid portrait of the woman and the times that were the most splendid in Japanese history. The Tale of Murasaki has that rare ability to transport the reader to a different place and another time, to create an exotic world where we can identify completely with the eleventh-century heroine.