A literary sensation and runaway bestseller this brilliant debut novel tells with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism the true confessions of one of Japan s most celebrated geisha. Nominated as one of America s best-loved novels by PBS s The Great American Read 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.