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In this literary tour de
force, novelist Arthur Golden enters a remote and
shimmeringly exotic world. For the protagonist of this
peerlessly observant first novel is Sayuri, one of Japan's
most celebrated geisha, a woman who is both performer and
courtesan, slave and goddess.
We follow Sayuri from her childhood in an impoverished
fishing village, where in 1929, she is sold to a
representative of a geisha house, who is drawn by the
child's unusual blue-grey eyes. From there she is taken to
Gion, the pleasure district of Kyoto. She is nine years old.
In the years that follow, as she works to pay back the price
of her purchase, Sayuri will be schooled in music and dance,
learn to apply the geisha's elaborate makeup, wear elaborate
kimono, and care for a coiffure so fragile that it requires
a special pillow. She will also acquire a magnanimous tutor
and a venomous rival. Surviving the intrigues of her trade
and the upheavals of war, the resourceful Sayuri is a
romantic heroine on the order of Jane Eyre and Scarlett
O'Hara. And "Memoirs of a Geisha is a triumphant work -
suspenseful, and utterly persuasive.
_Library Catalog
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