About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group

ISBN-100679781587

ISBN-139780679781585

eBay Product ID (ePID)719495

Product Key Features

Book TitleMemoirs of a Geisha : a Novel

Number of Pages448 Pages

LanguageEnglish

TopicLiterary, Biographical, Historical

Publication Year1999

GenreFiction

AuthorArthur Golden

Book SeriesVintage Contemporaries Ser.

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height1 in

Item Weight11.6 Oz

Item Length8 in

Item Width5.2 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

LCCN98-026449

Dewey Edition22

Reviews"Astonishing . . . breathtaking . . . You are seduced completely." -Washington Post Book World "Captivating, minutely imagined . . . a novel that refuses to stay shut." -Newsweek "A story with the social vibrancy and narrative sweep of a much-loved 19th century bildungsroman. . . . This is a high-wire act. . . . Rarely has a world so closed and foreign been evoked with such natural assurance." -The New Yorker From the Trade Paperback edition., "Astonishing . . . breathtaking . . . You are seduced completely." -Washington Post Book World "Captivating, minutely imagined . . . a novel that refuses to stay shut." -Newsweek "A story with the social vibrancy and narrative sweep of a much-loved 19th century bildungsroman. . . . This is a high-wire act. . . . Rarely has a world so closed and foreign been evoked with such natural assurance." -The New Yorker

SynopsisA literary sensation and runaway bestseller, this brilliant debut novel tells with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read 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. It begins in a poor fishing village in 1929, when, as a nine-year-old girl with unusual blue-gray eyes, she is taken from her home and sold into slavery to a renowned geisha house. 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. 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 is scorned as illusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction--at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful--and completely unforgettable.

LC Classification NumberPS3557.O35926M45