Memories of a Geisha

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An alluring tour de force, this brilliant debut novel is told with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism as the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha. Speaking with the wisdom of age and in a voice that is both haunting and startlingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri recounts her life as a geisha. In this narrative, 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 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, and witness her transformation as she learns the rigorous arts of the geisha. As World War II erupts and the geisha houses close, Sayuri must reinvent herself to find a rare kind of freedom on her own terms.