by Arthur Golden (Author)
This story is a rare and utterly engaging experience. It tells the extraordinary story of a geisha -summoning up a quarter century from 1929 to the post-war years of Japan's dramatic history, and opening a window into a half-hidden world of eroticism and enchantment, exploitation and degradation. A young peasant girl is sold as servant and apprentice to a renowned geisha house. She tells her story many years later from the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Her memoirs conjure up the perfection and the ugliness of life behind rice-paper screens, where young girls learn the arts of geisha - dancing and singing, how to wind the kimono, how to walk and pour tea, and how to beguile the land's most powerful men.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 512
Edition: 1
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 04 Jun 1998
ISBN 10: 0099771519
ISBN 13: 9780099771517
Book Overview: Seductive, evocative, exquisite - intimate memoirs spanning half a century of Japanese history, revealing a closed world.
Prizes: Winner of Whitaker Gold Book Award 2001. Runner-up for The BBC Big Read Top 100 2003. Shortlisted for BBC Big Read Top 100 2003.