This is a seductive and evocative epic on an intimate scale, which tells the
extraordinary story of a geisha girl. Summoning up more than twenty years of
Japan's most dramatic history, it uncovers a hidden world of eroticism and
enchantment, exploitation and degredation. 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