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Title: Exotic and Yet Familiar
Review: Memoirs of a Geisha is a fiction in the format of an as-told-to autobiography about a little girl removed from her impoverished household and put in the service of a Kyoto teahouse. It is absolutely compelling reading because we can identify with the main character's struggle for recognition as she combats poverty, obscurity and jealousy among her rivals to become a popular and respected geisha.At the same time, we become aware of how very different the Japanese cultural context is, and just how the geishas filled out their role in that context. The book is set during the last flowering of the traditional geishas, the prewar 1930s and 1940s, when geishas were paid entertainers, not just party girls and certainly not prostitutes as is often thought.Memoirs of a Geisha makes compelling reading with human emotions that get the reader hooked and exotic period detail that fascinate all the while. Reading it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience.
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