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Murasaki Shikibu is the best known writer to emerge from Japan's glorious Heian period. Her novel, The Tale of Genji (Genji-monogatari) is considered to be one of the world's finest and earliest novels. Some argue that Murasaki is the world's first modern novelist.
Don Quijote de la Manca by the Spanish author Cervantes has such a role in the Western literary tradition, that it's hard to mention anything posterior to it as the first fiction novel. Jerry mentioned Moll Flanders. That's a nice pick: the very novel that combined literature of roguery and picaresque novel.