 |
- General fiction - |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The Tale of Murasaki |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 The Tale of Murasaki byLiza Dalby Chatto & Windus [Random House] 426 pages, 2000 ISBN 0701169303 Reviewed by our UK Editor Rachel A. Hyde A thousand years ago in Japan, possibly the world’s first novel was written by a woman who observed the imperial court first hand. It was the tale of the Shining Prince Genji and it is still in print today – a story of the handsome prince’s many romantic entanglements, set in the exotic, stylised milieu of imperial Japan. In this novel Liza Dalby, the only westerner to become a Geisha, recreates the life and times of the author of The Tale of Genji – one Murasaki Shikibu. Born into an upper middle class family, she tells of her kindly father, a scholar of Chinese who taught his daughter the language to such a degree that it made her almost unmarriageable. She describes life in Miyako (modern Kyoto), and her despair at the confines of rusticity when her father is promoted to being governor of the distant province of Echizen. Here too are her loves, both male and female, her poetry, her married life and the transference to the stifling and ritualised life of a court lady, when her Genji stories attract the attention of the imperial family. This is a time when buildings were made of wood and paper and burned down easily; when a journey took many days and was fraught with danger; and when every aspect of life was turned into an art form. In the most readable manner possible, Dalby recreates the world of cherry blossom, waka (the early form of haiku), court politics, sexual intrigue and danger that made up court life in 11th century Japan. Pieced together from the few fragments of Murasaki’s writing that remain – poetry and diary entries – this is the story of a storyteller. Whether or not it all happened this way is something we will never know. The Tale of Murasaki is destined to become a classic and will remain on this reviewer’s keeper shelf - literary enough to please those who enjoy literary fiction, and accessible and absorbing enough for all readers. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||