If you've ever fallen in love with a novel

you know the moment:

you look at the clock,

it's one in the morning,

and you still can't put the book down.

You've been pulled into a world

conjured from someone else's imagination,

where the thoughts and feelings

of the people on the pages

are as real as your own.

It's hard to imagine a time

before novels as we know them existed --

but there was, in fact, a first novel.

And if we want to understand

how it came into being,

we have to look

more than 1000 years into the past,

at the writing desk of one woman.

Her name was Murasaki Shikibu,

or at least,

that's the only name we can give her now.

Born into an aristocratic Japanese family

sometime in the 970s,

she lived in at time when the name of women

were rarely recorded.

Instead, well-born women like Murasaki

were given nicknames:

usually related to the rank or position

of a close male relative.

She lived in an intensely-cloistered world

where women were constantly shielded

from public view by screens or curtains.

Sometimes, it was easier to identify

an aristocratic woman by the distinctive pattern

of a protruding sleeve than by her face.

Despite the often suffocating limitations

on their lives,

women like Murasaki were educated

and expected to be highly literate.

The granddaughter of a famous poet

and the daughter of a scholar,

Murasaki became conversant in Japanese

and Chinese literature so quickly,

she was considered something of a literary prodigy.

In her diary, Murasaki recorded

her father's reactions when he realized

exactly how talented she was.

He said,

"Just my luck.

What a pity she was not born a man."

In her early twenties, she married a man

old enough to be her father,

who died only two years later,

but not before they had a daughter.

Instead of marrying again,

the gifted young widow and mother

began working on The Tale of Genji,

an intricate saga of romance and intrigue,

in the life of an imperial Prince.

The Tale of Genji is often considered

the first modern novel,

because Murasaki offered readers

not just a chronicle of events,

but deep psychological insight into the characters

and their inner lives.

Her story made history because it was more

than just a story:

it was a complex literary portrait

of what it means to be human.

Although the hero of The Tale of Genji

is a man named "Prince Genji,"

Shikibu filled her novel with multifaceted

female characters who provided a rare glimpse

into how it felt to be a woman in her world.

As Virginia Woolf later wrote,

when Murasaki set out to illuminate

the complicated life of the prince,

she naturally chose the medium

of other women's minds.

The Tale of Genji earned Murasaki

a permanent place in literary history.

It may also have helped her secure a position

at the imperial court,

where she became an attendant and occasional

tutor to the Empress Shoshi.

Murasaki became quite close with the Empress,

and even secretly taught her Chinese:

a language only men were supposed to learn.

Although it was a comfortable life,

Murasaki was often lonely,

and her literary fame made her the target

of court gossips, who called her

pretentious, arrogant, and unfriendly --

complaints often heard about successful women

even today.

No one is sure exactly when Murasaki died,

but the legacy she left behind

changed Japanese literature forever,

and left a mark on the broader world of fiction

that can never be erased.

Throughout history, great novels

have traditionally been considered the domain

of male writers,

while tales of romance,

especially those written by women,

are often dismissed as frivolous or inferior.

But history itself tells a very different story.

Not only was the first novel a romance,

but it was one of the greatest literary masterpieces

in human history --

and it was written by a woman.

Because she dared to imagine the world

in ways that no one had before,

we can still hear her voice echoing through time

more than a thousand years later,

daring us to imagine worlds of our own.