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I have read and reread parts of this saga (though never the entire thing) several times over the years after first reading the Waley translation all the way back in 1975. I recently became intrigued by the problems the book sets for translators after reading a New Yorker article by Ian Baruma on various translations. Irritatingly, Goodreads doesn't seem to have a way for readers to add new reviews to books they've read before without eradicating the original review. Here is my original review en
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Dec 23, 2018
Karen
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really liked it
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review of another edition
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In the end, I am glad I read this book.
This transported me to a strange other world. It was written 1,000 years ago, by a woman who was a lady at the imperial court. And this is where this fiction is set: at a long-ago Japanese imperial court. Its hero is the complex and not totally lovable Genji. He is very beautiful, very graceful, very fashionable, very sensitive, very artistic, very high-born (though not quite of the first rank as he is illegitimate) and he is also a terrible privileged, philandering, self-willed, self-pitying pe
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I've come back to this huge saga repeatedly over the years, but I never actually have finished it. (I peter out around the time that Genji dies and the story continues with his son.) But it doesn't matter, as this novel is so episodic it can easily be read in installments.
I first read the Arthur Waley translation in the Modern Library edition, and since that time have also read the Seidensticker translation, and more recently I have also read bits of Helen McCullough's combined Tales of the Hei ...more
I first read the Arthur Waley translation in the Modern Library edition, and since that time have also read the Seidensticker translation, and more recently I have also read bits of Helen McCullough's combined Tales of the Hei ...more
Mar 28, 2009
Ching-In
marked it as to-read
Jan 31, 2013
Kim DeCina
marked it as to-read
Dec 22, 2013
Marje
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Dec 14, 2014
Fefa Lopes
marked it as to-read
Apr 24, 2016
Rebekah
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Jul 07, 2020
Monica W.
marked it as to-read
Sep 24, 2021
Wendy
is currently reading it
Dec 18, 2022
Davida "Davi"
marked it as to-read
