Geisha, a life

Finally a book review again! I have been reading a lot, but mostly German books where I dodn't know if there's an English translation available or not. This book I know is originally in English, so even though I read it in German I can blog about it in English.

Geisha, a life is the true story of Gijon geisha Mineko Iwasaki. She was the person who helped the author Arthur Golden in writing the Memoirs of a Geisha, a book that claimed to tell the truth about Gijon geisha life. However, Golden had made some things more "interesting" so Ms. Iwasaki decided to write her own book, with her own name.

Geisha, a life was really good.I enjoyed reading it very much, first of all the story was very interesting, and the way it was written was somehow peaceful and stable, so to say. Of course after the fictional work of Golden the geisha life Iwasaki describes seemed a bit more "normal" than the imaginary life Golden describes. That doesn't matter though, as the true story is interesting in a different, not so shocking way.

In the Essen library this book was classified under "Women's interest" - I really wunder why. It's not essentially a book for women, even though the main characters are all women. I recommend this book to everyone interested in the geisha culture or who were schocked about the "truths" in Memoirs of a Geisha.