Reddit reviews The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
We found 6 Reddit comments about The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Penguin Books
We found 6 Reddit comments about The Tale of Genji: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
It depends on what you mean by "fiction book." Different societies in different places developed their literary styles differently, so there's cases of history and myth being mixed together, or myth used as history, i.e. not held as fiction. Epic poems like the Iliad or Gilgamesh easily date back into antiquity and prehistory. Examples of long-form prose fiction can be found from Rome and Asia as early as the second century CE.
If you're asking more specifically about novels, it's a somewhat complicated question, as literary academia has something of a debate regarding a consensus definition on what actually constitutes a novel. However, the one I've always essentially been taught is: a fictional prose narrative of substantial length chronicling aspects of the history and life or lives of a character or characters, examining the ways in which they experience the world and the ways in which their experiences change them or fail to change them.
Assuming this definition of the novel, the generally held strongest contender is "The Tale of Genji" by Murasaki Shikibu, written in the early 11th century CE. It follows the life of Genji, a son of the Japanese emperor who is disinherited by his father and his subsequent struggle to return to honour and prominence, with a heavy focus on his romantic exploits along the way. The wiki article has a more detailed plot synopsis, and it has been translated into English several times, so it's fairly easily available in bookstores or online (if you do intend to actually read it, however, I recommend getting a version with annotations and historical background like the Penguin Classics version. It is extremely complicated to read out of its context without scholarly assistance).
There are other important entries to the development of the novel, especially from the European perspective. Beowulf (~8th century CE) and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (14th century CE) are both important forerunners, to say nothing of the myriad of romantic novellas that can became popular around the start of the 12th century and remained so for several centuries, but in particular, Don Quixote (1605CE, mentally unstable country gentleman rides around with his "squire" in pursuit of the glory and adventure of the tales of chivalry he reads) is considered the first European novel, and Robinson Crusoe (1719, the classic castaway story) the first English-language novel.
This answer is a very, very cursory overview of a broad field that touches on both literary and historical studies. I've focused on the novel generally here as its the medium I'm best equipped to speak to, but bear in mind that there are a lot of ways to interpret this question. The first pieces of fiction committed to paper are truly ancient. Even discounting poetry, prose fiction has a long and rich tradition that predates the concept of books (as does arguably the Tale of Gengi). This answer is also formed largely from course notes, but I'll recommend you some sources for digging more deeply into the topic.
I GOT A NEW JOB!!!! Thank you to fellow redditor and 'Cupider Chris for the hook-up. I'm going to be a hostess at a wine bar.
I start tomorrow at 4pm. I'm going to pick up some $50 insoles tomorrow at the drug store.
Making hamburgers tonight for dinner, going to celebrate with some vodka, and read the new book I bought.
If you're going to read The Tale of Genji, go Royall Tyler or go home. It's the most recent and is more faithful to the original text than Seidensticker and Whaley.
The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams
House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon
Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldua
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
You might enjoy The Tale of Genji, which is an incredibly beautiful and complex novel that deals in-depth with Buddhist themes (particularly karma), set in the culture of 11th century Japan.
English person here so I can't vouch for if said countries consider them classics but I would:
Japan/China: Zen Flesh Zen Bones
Japan: The Tale of Genji
France: Justine - Marquis De Sade
Also: Kafka's The Trial
>Believe me, I've tried...
http://www.amazon.com/Iliad-Homer/dp/0374529051
http://www.amazon.com/Odyssey-Homer/dp/0374525749/
http://www.amazon.com/Aeneid-Everymans-Library-Virgil/dp/0679413359/
http://www.amazon.com/Tale-Genji-Penguin-Classics-Deluxe/dp/014243714X/
http://www.amazon.com/Three-Kingdoms-Chinese-Translation-Footnotes/dp/0804843937/
http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Plato/dp/0141442433/
http://www.amazon.com/Nicomachean-Ethics-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140449493
http://www.amazon.com/Lord-Rings-50th-Anniversary-Vol/dp/0618640150/
http://www.amazon.com/Dune-Frank-Herbert/dp/0441172717/
/r/chess
/r/hiking
/r/cookingforbeginners/
/r/writing
/r/photography
/r/learnprogramming
https://www.coursera.org/
http://playgo.to/iwtg/en/
This is just stuff I came up with off the top of my head. The books alone will keep you busy for at least a couple months if you're a prodigious reader. There's pretty much no way you could possibly finish this entire list before September.