Memoirs of a Geisha
  • Published: 7 August 1998
  • ISBN: 9780099771517
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 512
  • RRP: $22.99

Memoirs of a Geisha

The Literary Sensation and Runaway Bestseller

Formats & editions
Paperback
7 Aug 1998
EBook
1 May 2010
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Seductive, evocative, exquisite - intimate memoirs spanning half a century of Japanese history, revealing a closed world.

'An epic tale and a brutal evocation of a disappearing world' The Times

A young peasant girl is sold as servant and apprentice to a renowned geisha house. Many years later she tells her story from a hotel in New York, opening a window into an extraordinary half-hidden world of eroticism and enchantment, exploitation and degradation and summoning up a quarter of a century of Japan's dramatic history.

'Intimate and brutal, written in cool, lucid prose it is a novel whose psychological empathy and historical truths are outstanding' Mail on Sunday
  • Published: 7 August 1998
  • ISBN: 9780099771517
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 512
  • RRP: $22.99
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About the author

Arthur Golden

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.

portrait photo of Arthur Golden

Praise for Memoirs of a Geisha

This is one of those rare novels that evokes a vanished world with absolute conviction and in every detail... This book is exceptional

Daily Mail

The sort of novel that novel-lovers yearn for, which is to say, so convincing that while reading it you become transported to another time, another place, and feel you are listening and seeing with someone else's ears and eyes

Margaret Forster

Endlessly fascinating...a narrative that is both gripping and beautifully paced...a wonderful read

Observer

Sayuri's memoirs reveal Golden to have great gifts of imaginative empathy...fascinating

Independent

An epic tale and a beautiful evocation of a rapidly vanishing world

The Times
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