This book is an epic masterpiece of Japanese literature that depicts the wars between two great clans along with intimate human emotions. It is rich in Buddhist themes, as it contemplates suffering, love, loss, and loyalty. The book is perfect for readers who enjoy captivating operatic-style storytelling. The edition is beautiful, with illustrations from the artistic master, Katsushika Hokusai, maps, and character guides. Overall, readers will appreciate the book's unique and distinctive feature as an oral epic, as well as its historical significance and cultural impact as a progenitor of all samurai stories.

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From the acclaimed translator of The Tale of Genji, a groundbreaking rendering of Japan’s great martial epic. The fourteenth-century Tale of the Heike is Japan’s Iliad—a moving depiction of the late twelfth-century wars between the Heike and Genji clans. No work has had a greater impact on later Japanese literature, theater, music, film, and manga—indeed on the Japanese people’s sense of their own past. It has also been a major source for medieval-Japan-based fantasy in English. With woodcuts by nineteenth-century artist Teisai Hokuba, a major student of the great Hokusai, Royall Tyler’s stunning presentation of this touchstone of Japanese culture recreates the oral epic as it was actually performed and conveys the rich and vigorous language of the original.

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