A literary sensation, seductive, evocative epic on an intimate scale, telling the extraordinary story of geisha girl with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism, the true confessions of Japan’s most celebrated geisha.

In Memoirs of Geisha we enter a world where appearances are paramount where a girl’s virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder, where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned asillusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction- at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful and completely unforgettable.

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 art of geisha – dancing and singing, how to wind the kimono, how to walk and pour tea, and how to beguile the most powerful men.

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden, Mass Market Paperback, 3.57, 503 pages.