If You Like Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden ...

Posted - 03/22/2005 : 4:58:01 PM
You might enjoy some of these novels of Japan and China, most historical, many
concerning geishas, some by award winning authors, and one nonfiction
"classic" on geishas.

The binding chair, or, A visit from the Foot Emancipation Society : a
novel / Kathryn Harrison
In poised and elegant prose, Kathryn Harrison weaves a stunning story of
women, travel, and flight; of love, revenge, and fear; of the search for
home and the need to escape it. Set in alluring Shanghai at the turn of
the century, The Binding Chair intertwines the destinies of a Chinese
woman determined to forget her past and a Western girl focused on the
promises of the future. (amazon.com)

Cloud of sparrows / Takashi Matsuoka
[This] magnificent...novel, set amid the violence and beauty of
nineteenth-century Japan, takes us beyond the epic tradition of James
Clavell's Shogun and into a majestic realm of samurai and geishas,
ninjas and Zen masters. Brilliantly imagined, gloriously written, Cloud
of Sparrows is at once a sweeping historical adventure and a love story
of almost unbearable poignancy. (catalog summary)

Geisha / Liza Crihfield Dalby
In this classic bestseller, Liza Dalby, the only non-Japanese ever to
have trained as a geisha, offers an insider's look at the exclusive
world of female companions and the Japanese male elite. Her new preface
considers the geisha today as a vestige of tradition as Japan heads into
the 21st century. 62 photos/illustrations. (catalog summary) This is a
nonfiction offering.

The pearl diver : a novel / Jeff Talarigo
This unusual debut novel set in 1940s postwar Japan renders brutality
and intolerance in quiet, lyrical prose. When a 19-year-old pearl diver,
the youngest of a crew working the Seto Inland Sea, discovers she is
sick with leprosy, she is banished to Nagashima, an island leprosarium,
where she is told to change her name and forget her past. Nagashima is
its own kind of civilization, where the renamed "Miss Fuji" must care
for the sicker patients, which includes helping the island doctors
perform forced, often late-term abortions. Treated with drugs that make
her isolation unnecessary, Miss Fuji remains healthy ("she has only the
two spots on her body.... Medals or curses, she isn't sure how to wear
them"), but she is still not permitted to leave and remains a captive
for most of her life. Drawing from actual medical history, Talarigo
succeeds in telling a compelling story whose strength is its elegant
simplicity. (Publishers Weekly)

Snow country / Yasunari Kawabata ; translated by Edward G. Seidensticker

With the brushstroke suggestiveness and astonishing grasp of motive that
won him the Nobel Prize for Literature, Yasunari Kawabata tells a story
of wasted love set amid the desolate beauty of western Japan, the
snowiest region on earth. It is there, at an isolated mountain
hotspring, that the wealthy sophisticate Shimamura meets the geisha
Komako, who gives herself to him without regrets, knowing that their
passion cannot last. Shimamura is a dilettante of the feelings; Komako
has staked her life on them. Their affair can have only one outcome.
Yet, in chronicling its doomed course, one of Japan's greatest modern
writers creates a novel dense in implication and exalting in its
sadness. (catalog summary)

The tale of Genji; a novel in six parts, by Lady Murasaki. Translated
from the Japanese by Arthur Waley
In the Heian period, Prince Genji associates with a variety of court
women. (NoveList). Considered to be the first novel ever written. I
really, really enjoyed this book!

The tale of Murasaki : a novel / Liza Dalby
A fictional biography of Murasaki Shikibu, author of The Tale of Genji,
the most famous tale in Japanese literature. As children, Murasaki and a
friend made up stories about an imaginary lover, Genji. Fascinated by
her father's descriptions of life at court, she later began writing
romantic tales centered around the "shining prince.'' The young woman
has intimate relationships with both women and men, but marries her
father's choice, an older gentleman of means. She is widowed soon after
the birth of their daughter. Her fame as a storyteller and her
friendship with the regent's daughter lead to her appointment as
lady-in-waiting to the empress; she is also a courtesan, as is expected
of those serving in the imperial household. After a number of years at
court, with her daughter established as a lady-in-waiting, the writer
withdraws to a mountain retreat and lives the life of a Buddhist nun.
The novel is based on the existing fragments of Shikibu's diary and on
her poetry, written in a style similar to haiku, which is included in
the text in both English and Japanese. (Molly Connally, School Library
Journal)

Michele R. Brown
Reference Librarian
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Posted - 03/02/2007 : 1:14:06 PM
 

The Ginger Tree, by Oswald Wynd
The Tales of the Otori triology by Lian Hearn:
Across the Nightingale Floor book 1
Grass for His Pillow, book 2
The Brilliance of the Moon, book 3
My Dream of You, by Nuala O'Faolain
Sleep in the Woods, by Dorothy Eden
Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier
Correlli's Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres
Possession, by A.S. Byatt
The Crown of Columbus by Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich
A Singular Hostage by Ali Thalassa
Tulip Fever by Deborah Moggach
Ahab's Wife, by Sena Jeter Naslund
Drowning Ruth, by Christina Schwarz
The passion of Artemesia by Susan Vreeland
City of Light by lauren Belfer

These titles are all historical fiction and are very good books that I
believe you will enjoy. I have read all except "A Singular Hostage" and
that title is on my reading list! if you have any further questions
please feel free to contact us again.

Martha Hutzel
Branch Manager
Snow Memorial Library