This is a seductive and evocative epic on an intimate scale, which
tells the extraordinary story of a geisha girl. Summoning up more
than twenty years of Japan's most dramatic history, it uncovers
a hidden world of eroticism and enchantment, exploitation and
degradation. From a small fishing village in 1929, the tale moves
to the glamorous and decadent heart of Kyoto in the 1930s, where 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; it exquisitely evokes another culture, a
different time and the details of an extraordinary way of life. It
conjures 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 most powerful men.
'Intimate and brutal, written in cool, lucid prose it is a novel whose psychological empathy and historical truths are outstanding' Mail on Sunday 'Endless and fascinating-a narrative that is both gripping and beautifully paced-a wonderful read' Observer 'This is a high-wire act- Rarely has a world so closed and foreign been evoked with such natural assurance' New Yorker 'Memoirs of a Geisha ' is the sort of novel that novel-lovers yearn for, which is to say, so convincing that while reading it you become transported to another time, another place, and feel you're listening and seeing with someone else's ears and eyes' Margaret Forster
