Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (next session 19th June)
At the age of nine, Chiyo Sakamoto is taken from her poverty-stricken fishing village of Yoroido on the coast of the Sea of Japan with her older sister Satsu and sold to an okiya (geisha boarding house) in Gion, the most prominent geisha district in Kyoto. Perceived as less attractive in looks and demeanor, Satsu is not sold into the okiya and is instead forced into becoming a prostitute in Kyoto’s pleasure district. Chiyo lives in the okiya alongside another young girl named Pumpkin, the elderly and grumbling Granny, money-obsessed Mother, and Auntie, a failed geisha. Also living in the okiya is the famous and ill-mannered geisha, Hatsumomo. She promptly takes to disliking Chiyo, who she sees as a potential future rival who may threaten her place in the okiya and Gion, as well as Mother’s financial dependence upon her earnings. Hatsumomo begins to go out of her way to get rid of Chiyo.
Arthur Golden (born December 6, 1956) is an American writer. Memoirs of a Geisha, published in 1997, spent two years on the New York Times bestseller list. It has sold more than four million copies in English and has been translated into thirty-two languages around the world.
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