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, wh...more
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.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 begin...more
The Japanese believe that until the age of three children, whether Japanese or not, are gods, each one an okosama, or “lord child.” On their third birthday they fall from grace and join the rest of the human race. In Amélie Nothomb’s new novel The Character of Rain, we learn that divinity is a difficult thing from which to recover.