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.

• We started tracking this book on January 25, 2013.
• This book was $11.99 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 107 times in the past 4,371 days.
• The current price of this book is $4.99 last checked 2 hours ago.
• The lowest price to date was $4.99 last reached on January 13, 2025.
• This book has been $4.99 5 times since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $13.99 last reached on October 16, 2024.
• This book has been $13.99 20 times since we started tracking it.
• This book is currently at its lowest price since we started tracking it.

• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 384 Pages
• File Size: 22,624 KB