The English title, "Memoirs of a Geisha", indicates well what it is: the fictional autobiography (although based on fact) of a Geisha in the old imperial Japan. Two things strike the reader as soon as he started to penetrate the genteel world of this cruel and initiatory novel, the author describes so well the anxieties and joys of the beautiful Sayuri, torn from his family is a man - and he is American. Now it emerges that the book fragrance that East Asian novels lovers know well, this meditative slowness recalls in the best passages, the great Inoue. We spend a really good read, we tremble for the narrator, we discover little known traditions down home - without ever appearance "documentary" takes precedence over the plot. The only complaint would be that the love affair, and thus the end (I will not tell, of course!): This "happy end" brings us a little forced, rather disappointed and distraught, beside the novels "to rose water "- which does not seem to be the avowed aim of the author ... Too bad. That aside, this story of another world, another time, written by a novelist to the contagious passion, you will travel with delight.
