Recounted in the voice of Lady Murasaki at the end of her life, Liza Dalbys novel, The Tale of Murasaki, is about this remarkable woman and her life in the Heian era, Japans golden age of high aesthetics, sexual politics, and literary brilliance. She has moved from nonfiction books (Geisha and Kimono: Fashioning Culture) to historical fiction (The Tale of Murasaki) to her latest collection of short. In the eleventh century Murasaki Shikibu wrote the world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji, the most popular work in the history of Japanese literature. She records a remarkable place of political and sexual plotting, male power and female manipulation, as she writes the Tale of Genji, the masterpiece of Japanese literature. This Japanese classic has been recognized as the worlds first novel. The Tale of Murasaki is an elegant and brilliantly authentic historical novel by the author of Geisha and the only Westerner ever to have become a geisha. The Tale of Murasakiis an elegant and brilliantly authentic historical novel by the author of Geishaand the only Westerner ever to have become a geisha. Murasaki sees everything, the Emperor and Empress, aristocrats and concubines, warriors and servants, her own family.

In a wonderful world shaped by beauty and poetry, ancient traditions and popular intrigue, a young woman at the centre of the eleventh-century Japanese imperial court observes the exotic world around her.

The tale of murasaki by liza dalby