A seductive and evocative epic on an intimate scale that tells the extraordinary story of a geisha girl. Summoning up more than twenty years of Japans most dramatic history it uncovers a hidden world of eroticism and enchantment exploitation and degradation. From a small fishing village in 1929 the tale moves to the glamorous and decadent heart of Kyoto in the 1930s where a young peasant girl is sold as servant and apprentice to a renowned geisha house. She tells her story many years later from the Waldorf Astoria in New York; it exquisitely evokes another culture a different time and the details of an extraordinary way of life. It conjures up the perfection and the ugliness of life behind rice-paper screens where young girls learn the arts of geisha - dancing and singing how to wind the kimono how to walk and pour tea and how to beguile the most powerful men.
