num_pages: 424
description: A seductive and evocative epic on an intimate scale, that 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.
language: English
title: Memoirs of a Geisha
titlecomplete: Memoirs of a Geisha
characters: Sayuri Nitta, Hatsumono, Pumpkin, Dr. Crab, Ken Iwamura, Mameha, Ichiro Tanaka, Toshikazu Nobu, Mr. Bekku
genres: Fiction, Japan, Classics, Adult Fiction, Historical, Asia, Historical Fiction, Romance, Adult, Novels
ratings_count: 1957629
places: Japan, Kyoto
publisher: Vintage Books USA