Read Chapter 1
 

Memoirs of a Geisha is now being adapted into a major motion picture 
from Columbia Pictures, directed by Steven Spielberg.
 

Denver Post
Hartford Courant
SF Chronicle
Amazon.com

RELATED LINKS:

Q & A with Arthur Golden

                  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. 

                  "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 Random House Online Catalog