"Memoirs of a Geisha"
(Vintage, Paperback, 1998, read: August 99)
"This story is a rare and utterly engaging experience. It tells the extraordinary tale of a geisha - summoning up a quarter century, from 1929 to
the post-war years of Japan's dramatic history, and opening a window onto a half-hidden world of eroticism and enchantment, exploitation and
degradation."
The biography of the geisha Sayuri is written so convincingly that you may assume it's non-fiction. It shows a completely new world, unknown to
most readers: the world of the geisha of Gion. Their training, rituals, hirarchies and private life. It's also a classic love story: girl meets man,
girl falls in love with man, girl looses man, girl gets man. Simple, tragic and wonderfully written. Without the love story in the background it would be
a comprehensive study about an unknown culture. Without the geisha-background it would be just a sweet love story. Both of them wound together
make the book into a wonderful novel which can't be laid aside easily.
[Dorothée Büttgen, September 99]