A Tale Unasked
by Lady Nijo & Meredith Mckinney (translator)
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Pages:
288
Published:
Feb 2026
Format
Paperback
Publisher
Penguin Publishing Group
Imprint
Penguin Classics
ISBN:
9780241562468
Lady Nijo's A Tale Unasked (Towazugatari) is the last, and arguably the finest, among classical Japanese literature's famous 'women's diaries'. Thought to have been completed around 1307, when the author was in her late forties, the first two thirds of this autobiographical work document in rich and compelling detail the experiences of an imperial concubine whose time at court was ruled and finally ruined by her passionate and complicated love life. The final third of the work equally memorably describes her peripatetic life after the emperor expelled her from the court in her mid-twenties and she became a nun, wandering the roads of Japan as a form of Buddhist austerity.
Meredith McKinney's superb translation breathes new life into Lady Nijo's fascinating diaries, which survived her era in a single copy and were only rediscovered in the 1940s.
Meredith McKinney's superb translation breathes new life into Lady Nijo's fascinating diaries, which survived her era in a single copy and were only rediscovered in the 1940s.
$36.00
