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An alluring tour de force: a brilliant debut novel told with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism as the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha.
Vintage
November 2005
Featuring: Nitta Sayuri
512 pages
ISBN: 1400096898
Paperback (reprint)
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Contemporary
Speaking to us with the wisdom of age and in a voice at
once haunting and startlingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri tells
the story of her life as a geisha. In Memoirs of a 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, always elusive, is scorned as illusion. Sayuri's story begins in a poor fishing village in 1929,
when, as a nine-year-old with unusual blue-gray eyes, she
is taken from her home and sold into slavery to a renowned
geisha house. Through her eyes, we see the decadent heart
of Gion--the geisha district of Kyoto--with its marvelous
teahouses and theaters, narrow back alleys, ornate temples,
and artists' streets. And we witness her transformation as
she learns the rigorous arts of the geisha: dance and
music; wearing kimono, elaborate makeup and hair; pouring
sake to reveal just a touch of inner wrist; competing with
a jealous rival for men's solicitude and the money that
goes with it. But as World War II erupts and the geisha
houses are forced to close, Sayuri, with little money and
even less food, must reinvent herself all over again to
find a rare kind of freedom on her own terms. Memoirs of a Geisha is a book of nuances and vivid
metaphor, of memorable characters rendered with humor and
pathos. And though the story is rich with detail and a vast
knowledge of history, it is the transparent, seductive
voice of Sayuri that the reader remembers.
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