Your Book Review: The Tale Of Genji - ACX Book Review

A wonderfully entertaining dive into The Tale of Genji, arguably the world’s first novel, written a thousand years ago in a culture that can feel almost impossibly alien. This review explores Heian court life, poetry, sex, status, translation, and the strange experience of discovering recognisably human emotions beneath a world of customs we barely understand.* 00:00:00 - Introduction* 00:00:35 - The past is an alien civilisation* 00:02:18 - Who is Genji?* 00:07:34 - Aesthetics is everything* 00:09:45 - Hierarchy is also everything* 00:12:47 - Everything is fleeting and life is full of sorrow* 00:14:33 - A life behind screens* 00:21:07 - Marriages and other forms of arrangement* 00:29:47 - Say it with a poem* 00:36:54 - Everything stands between the lines* 00:40:22 - Reading a book written in a dead language* 00:54:52 - Is it really the world’s oldest novel?* 00:58:06 - What it’s like to read Genjihttps://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/your-book-review-the-tale-of-genji?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe