The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki

Hailed by many as one of the finest works of Japanese literature of the 20th century, Junichiro Tanizaki's epic novel Sasameyuki - published in English as The Makioka Sisters - covers the lives of four sisters from a haughty upper middle-class Osaka family over the five-year period leading up to the Pacific War. One part melodrama, one part juicy soap opera, the novel, set in the upper classes of Japanese society is a sort of Japanese version of Upstairs, Downstairs or Dynasty or Downton Abbey. It is Pride and Prejudice, only set in Osaka, with a plot so rutted with pitfalls that Jane Austen herself would have relished it.