The first novel in history was written by a woman

Around the year 1008, at the imperial court in Kyoto, a lady-in-waiting to Empress Shōshi began circulating, chapter by chapter, a story that today fills more than a thousand pages: The Tale of Genji, the amorous and political life of an impossibly charming prince.

We know her as Murasaki Shikibu, but that was a court nickname: her real name was never recorded. Her book, on the other hand, survived in full. Fifty-four chapters, hundreds of characters, jealousy, ambition, regret — people who change as the years pass, something no one had done before with such patience. That is why many consider it the first novel in history, ten centuries before the genre became fashionable in Europe.

There is an even better detail. In the Japan of her day, "serious" literature was written in Chinese, and that territory belonged to men. Women were left with kana, the phonetic script of everyday life. Murasaki wrote her masterpiece in the lesser alphabet — the one she was allowed. And so Japan's greatest book was born in the language that power didn't bother to guard.