Expressions of passion and heartbreak, written by Murasaki Shikibu 1,000 years ago, transcend time and culture in this new translation of the poetry in the first 33 chapters of The Tale of Genji. It is the relationship between the novel's characters and the poetry that creates the beauty and sustained erotic tone of Lady Murasaki's story. For the first time, these 400+ poems are presented in the increasingly popular format of tanka (5-7-5-7-7), along with extended notes that reveal the hidden details and depth of meaning in Murasaki's real and fictional worlds.

Encyclopedic in scope and heroically audacious, The Novel: An Alternative History is the first attempt in over a century to tell the complete story of our most popular literary form. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the novel did not originate in 18th-century England, nor even with Don Quixote, but is coeval with civilization itself. After a pugnacious introduction, in which Moore defends innovative, demanding novelists against their conservative critics, the book relaxes into a world tour of the pre-modern novel, beginning in ancient Egypt and ending in 16th-century China, with many exotic ports-of-call: Greek romances; Roman satires; medieval Sanskrit novels narrated by parrots; Byzantine erotic thrillers; 5000-page Arabian adventure novels; Icelandic sagas; delicate Persian novels in verse; Japanese war stories; even Mayan graphic novels. Throughout, Moore celebrates the innovators in fiction, tracing a continuum between these pre-modern experimentalists and their postmodern progeny. Irreverent, iconoclastic, informative, entertaining-The Novel: An Alternative History is a landmark in literary criticism that will encourage readers to rethink the novel.

Mukoda's wonderful stories vividly present the strengths and sorrows of modern Japanese women.--Gail Tsukiyama "Superbly rendered into English."--Publishers Weekly

A stimulating exploration of the haiku masterpiece. Matsuo Basho (1644-94) is considered Japan's greatest haiku poet. Narrow Road to the Interior (Oku no Hosomichi) is his masterpiece. Ostensibly a chronological account of the poet's five-month journey in 1689 into the deep country north and west of the old capital, Edo, the work is in fact artful and carefully sculpted, rich in literary and Zen allusion and filled with great insights and vital rhythms. In Basho's Narrow Road: Spring and Autumn Passages, poet and translator Hiroaki Sato presents the complete work in English and examines the threads of history, geography, philosophy, and literature that are woven into Basho's exposition. He details in particular the extent to which Basho relied on the community of writers with whom he traveled and joined in linked verse (renga) poetry sessions, an example of which, A Farewell Gift to Sora, is included in this volume. In explaining how and why Basho made the literary choices he did, Sato shows how the poet was able to transform his passing observations into words that resonate across time and culture.

A Film of Words is the result of a writing project devised by this pair who have been writing together in the Japanese genres for over 20 years. In this book they combine haiku, tanka, haibun, haiga, free verse and prose along with graphics from both artists.

A tender, timeless fable about afterlife from Japan's best-loved children's writer.