The Tale of Murasaki brings vividly to life the fascinating eleventh-century world of the creator of Japan's enduring masterpiece, Tale of Genji

Enter the exotic, entrancing world of the Japanese Imperial court...for a gentle immersion in a world of long ago and far away, The Tale of Murasaki is just the ticket...hypnotic

Luscious, lush and languorously elegant... You feel you are breathing the air of 11th-century Japan

Captivating... The Tale of Murasaki gets the big things right, including, indispensably, the dark undercurrent of sadness running below the bright, embroidered surface... All this, and much more, rings so true to the created milieu of Genji that one is inclined to indulge Dalby in all she has dreamed or imagined

An amazing feat... Anyone already an enthusiast either of Tale of Genji or of Arthur Golden’s wonderful Memoirs of a Geisha will already be running to the bookstore for this book... A wonderful accomplishment

Liza Dalby is not just a remarkable scholar of Japan – she is a keen storyteller

This is poignant, quirky and delightfully original

Confirms that she's a writer to watch

A delightful tale

This is an assured second novel - and wonderful company for that long-overdue summer trip

Imaginative and transporting, but entirely unfussy and unsentimental, the novel is written with a glint in the eye that gives it that extra bit of wind beneath its wings

Wilson has done his research impeccably and he writes superbly well