قصة الكتاب :
The Tale of Genji is a very old literary work written in the early 11th century by Japanese author Murasaki Shikibu, who was a noblewoman and a lady-in-waiting. The novel was created in the orihon style, which involved several sheets of paper pasted together and folded alternately in opposite directions. This is often considered to be the world’s first novel and comprises of fifty-four loosely connected chapters. The story revolves around the lifestyles of high courtiers during the Heian period. The original manuscript does not exist today although some fragments survive on an old twelfth-century scroll. The modern editions of the book are mostly based on the thirteenth-century compilation by the poet Fujiwara no Teika. A literal translation of the book would be unreadable today. This is because the language used belongs to a different period and it isn’t possible to convey what was meant by the many allusions and references made through several phrases, that must have been significant then, but are lost on the readers today. The translation of the book has been a challenge. The main attempt has been to retain Murasaki’s lyrical writing style and stay as true as possible to the message she was trying to convey, while recognizing that a lot of it is not completely understood today. Murasaki Shikibu wrote the book while she was a lady-in-waiting at the Japanese courts and most likely completed it around 1010. Most scholarly works at the time were written in Chinese and prose was not considered the equivalent of poetry, so her work was not taken too seriously at the time of publication. This changed later as people gradually discovered that The Tale of Genji was a graceful work of imaginative fiction. The author clearly had a comprehensive knowledge of both Chinese as well as Japanese poetry. It contains 800 waka or courtly poems that are depicted to be the writings of the main character, Hikaru Genji. The story unfolds through its many chapters, revealing the life and legacy of Genji. At a basic level, the story is an introduction for most readers into the culture of the aristocracy of Japan at the time. The entire era is recreated beautifully through the story of Genji who is a handsome, gifted courtier, a passionate lover and a sincere friend. The majority of the stories are about the many loves of Genji and each of the women in his life have been depicted separately and in vivid detail. The work is written with good taste and sensitivity to human emotions but has a dark tone towards the end, a reflection of the Buddhist belief regarding the world and its transience. . Like all classical works of literature, this too has been adapted into other media such as films, opera, theatre and television series. On November 1, 2008 Google celebrated a thousand years of the The Tale of Genji with a Google doodle.