The Tale of Genji

In the reign of a certain Emperor, there lived among the women of the inner palace an Intimate - neither highborn nor shielded by powerful kin. Yet the Emperor loved her above all others and summoned her to his side night after night. The jealousy of the higher consorts curdled into relentless cruelty, and her health failed by the day. What she left behind was an imperial prince of such breathtaking beauty that all who saw him caught their breath. It did not take long for the child who would come to be known as the Shining Prince to become the most radiant - and the most imperiled - figure at court.

Hikaru Genji, raised without ever knowing his mother, celebrates his coming-of-age at twelve and enters a political marriage with Aoi, daughter of the Minister of the Left. But the one who captures his heart is Fujitsubo - his father's new consort, said to be the living image of his dead mother. Carrying this forbidden longing in secret, Genji begins to wander the nighttime capital. He encounters Utsusemi, a proud married woman he meets in a clandestine rendezvous. In a crumbling house near Fifth Avenue he discovers the fragile beauty Yūgao. At a mountain temple in the northern hills he catches sight of a young girl who is Fujitsubo's very likeness - the child Murasaki.

But in the Heian court, to love someone is to wound them. One night Yūgao is struck down by a sinister possessing spirit and dies without warning. The political feud with the Minister of the Right's faction intensifies, and Genji's position begins to falter. And the jealousy of the Rokujō Haven transcends even her own will, taking shape as a living spirit that bares its fangs at the very person Genji should protect above all.

Written in the early eleventh century by a lady-in-waiting known to posterity as Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji has been read across a thousand years as the world's oldest full-length psychological novel. This volume contains the opening chapters - from Chapter 1, "The Paulownia Pavilion," through Chapter 11, "Falling Flowers."