About this Item
Light Creasing on Front, Rear Covers, Spine; Front, Rear Covers, Spine Lightly Chipped; Spine Moderately Cocked; Edges Lightly Soiled; Moderate Yellowing Due to Age. NATIONAL BESTSELLER. #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER. OVER ONE YEAR ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST. BOOK DESIGN BY: Iris Weinstein. COVER PHOTOGRAPH: AKG, London. COVER DESIGN: Barbara de Wilde. MOVIE TIE-IN: This novel was the basis of the 2005 feature film of the same name. SYNOPSIS: A literary sensation and runaway bestseller, this brilliant debut novel presents with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha. 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. Arthur Golden was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and was educated at Harvard College, where he received a degree in art history, specializing in Japanese art. In 1980 he earned an M.A. in Japanese history from Columbia University, where he also learned Mandarin Chinese. Following a summer at Beijing University, he worked in Tokyo, and, after returning to the United States, earned an M.A. in English from Boston University. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Seller Inventory # 003258
Bibliographic Details
Title: memoirs of a geisha a novel
Publisher: Vintage Contemporaries Vintage Books A Division of Random House, Inc., New York
Publication Date: 1999
Binding: Trade Paperback
Illustrator: AKG, London
Condition: Good
Edition: First Thus 5th Printing.
About this title
The result is a novel with the broad social canvas (and love of coincidence) of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen's intense attention to the nuances of erotic maneuvering. Readers experience the entire life of a geisha, from her origins as an orphaned fishing-village girl in 1929 to her triumphant auction of her mizuage (virginity) for a record price as a teenager to her reminiscent old age as the distinguished mistress of the powerful patron of her dreams. We discover that a geisha is more analogous to a Western "trophy wife" than to a prostitute--and, as in Austen, flat-out prostitution and early death is a woman's alternative to the repressive, arcane system of courtship. In simple, elegant prose, Golden puts us right in the tearoom with the geisha; we are there as she gracefully fights for her life in a social situation where careers are made or destroyed by a witticism, a too-revealing (or not revealing enough) glimpse of flesh under the kimono, or a vicious rumor spread by a rival "as cruel as a spider."
Golden's web is finely woven, but his book has a serious flaw: the geisha's true romance rings hollow--the love of her life is a symbol, not a character. Her villainous geisha nemesis is sharply drawn, but she would be more so if we got a deeper peek into the cause of her motiveless malignity--the plight all geisha share. Still, Golden has won the triple crown of fiction: he has created a plausible female protagonist in a vivid, now-vanished world, and he gloriously captures Japanese culture by expressing his thoughts in authentic Eastern metaphors.
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