Hayy ibn Yaqdhan
Murasaki Shikibu's "Tale of Genji", an early 11th-century Japanese text, has sometimes been described as the world's first novel, but there is considerable debate over this — there were certainly long fictional works that preceded it. Spread of printed books in China led to the appearance of classical Chinese novels by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). An early example from Europe was written in Muslim Spain by the Sufi writer Ibn Tufayl entitled "Hayy ibn Yaqdhan". Later developments occurred after the invention of the printing press. Miguel de Cervantes, author of "Don Quixote" (the first part of which was published in 1605), is frequently cited as the first significant European novelist of the modern era. Literary historian Ian Watt, in "The Rise of the Novel" (1957), argued that the modern novel was born in the early 18th century.