Murasaki Shikibu wrote The Tale of Genji around the year 1000 — a work many scholars consider the world's first novel. She was a lady-in-waiting at the Heian Japanese court who hid her Chinese literacy because it was considered unfeminine, wrote in secret, and produced a thousand-page exploration of love, power, and impermanence that anticipated the psychological novel by eight hundred years.
This episode traces what we know of Murasaki's life at court, the composition of Genji, and the work's status as the founding text of the novel form.
Murasaki's court position and the literary culture of Heian Japan that produced her
The hidden Chinese education she concealed because female scholarship was frowned upon
The Tale of Genji — a thousand pages of psychological insight written a millennium ago
The debate over whether Genji is the world's first novel and why it matters
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