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 degredation. 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 the geisha - dancing and singing, how to wind the kimonok, how to walk and pour tea, and how to beguile the most powerful men.

About the Author
Arthur Golden was born and brought up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He is a 1978 graduate of Harvard College with a degree in art history, specialising in Japanese art. In 1980 he earned an MA in Japanese history from Columbia where he also learned Mandarin Chinese. In 1988 he received an MA in English from Boston. He has lived and worked in Japan, but now lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, with his wife and children.

Reviews
Exceptional and erotic * Literary Review *
Intimate and brutal, written in cool, lucid prose it is a novel whose psychological empathy and historical truths are outstanding * Mail on Sunday *
This book is exceptionl * Daily Mail *


Awards
Winner of Whitaker Gold Book Award 2001. Short-listed for BBC Big Read Top 100 2003.



Book Information
ISBN 9780099282853
Author Arthur Golden
Format Paperback
Page Count 512
Imprint Vintage
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Weight(grams) 269g
Dimensions(mm) 178mm * 110mm * 30mm