Too much Don t think we need is a simplistic claim How bout She is best known as the author of The Tale of Genji written in Japanese between about 1000 and 1008 and sometimes considered the earliest novel Although ancient Greek and Roman novels predate Murasaki s by several centuries The Tale of Genji is the first extended prose work to yadda yadda However the yadda yadda needs to be something Apuleius didn t do in The Golden Ass