What book are you reading now?

[SolemnBoy]

It's a difficult book to really get without being knowledgeable about Feudal Japanese court decorum and the intensely symbolic nature of East Asian literature from that period.

A good case can be made for the book being the oldest novel in the world, and not simply the oldest psychological novel.

As to Japanese literature in general, Natsume Soseki's Kokoro is one of my favourite novels. Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask are interesting as one of the earliest works (in modern Japan) to deal openly with homosexuality.

Some of the poems are pretty beautiful but in the end I'm under the opinion that they're doomed to be lost in translation. Japanese can be a tricky language to translate but it's also changed a lot since the writing of the book - older Japanese must be even harder.

The book was written before Feudal Japan, but you're kind of right. The introduction explains everything you need to know though so that's not really the reason why it's going slowly - I'll definitely see it through until the end! I just ordered a bunch of books and 'Kokoro' was one of them - heard loads of good things about it Also ordered, amongst other things, the diary of the author behind Genji.