The Book of Loss
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Set in the perfectly realized world of imperial tenth-century Japan, The Book of Loss is a gripping novel of sexual jealousy at court.
A renowned storyteller and lady-in-waiting to the Empress, the narrator is locked in a bitter rivalry with another woman for the love of a banished nobleman. Forced to observe the complex rules and social hierarchies of court life, she finds herself caught in a trap of her own making. Her machinations reach such a pitch that they threaten to undermine the rule of the Emperor himself. She records her plight, and her acidulous observations of courtly life, in her diary. Her voice is unforgettable—both foreign and utterly modern. Her sense of loss is unbearable, her love is all-consuming, and it will push her to the extremes of rivalry.
Offering intimate seductions and terrible betrayals, The Book of Loss by Julith Jedamus takes the reader into the farthest reaches of desire, where passion rules and jealousy leads to unthinkable acts.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Told in the style of the classical Japanese women's diaries from the Heian era (794 1185 C.E.) Jedamus's first book is a melodramatic court romance. The banishment of Kanesuke no Tachibana for his crime of seducing the emperor's daughter sets off a bitter feud between the brooding narrator who is 29, unnamed and a provincial governor's daughter and her friend-turned-rival Izumi no Jiju. They both love Kanesuke, and they are both ladies-in-waiting to Empress Akiko (real-life mistress to Tale of Genji author Murasaki Shikibu), and they engage in a battle to ruin each other's reputations through spying and gossip. When a ripe intrigue of the narrator's backfires with the empress, and, separately, the emperor's son and heir dies of smallpox, the narrator's moral corruption is blamed, forcing her to commit an act of sacrifice that is also her redemption. Jedamus, whose background is in art history, skillfully evokes the elegant aesthetic and elaborate pageantry of the Heian period, particularly in the book's fascinating glossary. But her writing is as florid as her plot is overwrought.
