Golden is well-versed in the Japanese language, and even in Mandarin Chinese, so the language posed no barrier to his research. imagination," he told Maclean's writer Tanya Davies, "and the geisha district in Kyoto, Japan, sparked mine." Although an oft-taught tenet of writing is to write about topics the writer knows, Golden decided it was "better to write about what sparks. When Golden began toying with the idea of writing a novel, he remembered the intrigue he had felt about geishas and believed the topic would adapt well to a fictional treatment. While in Japan, he met a man whose mother was a geisha and found the topic interesting. After earning a bachelor's degree in art history from Harvard University, a master's degree in Japanese history from Columbia University, and another master's degree in English from Boston University, Golden worked for an English-language magazine in Tokyo from 1980 to 1982. Golden was raised in a literary family his cousin Arthur Ochs Sulzberger is publisher of the New York Times. Newsweek reviewer Jeff Giles called it "a faux autobiography ten years and 2,300 pages in the making.Ī few reservations aside, Golden has written a novel that's full of cliffhangers great and small, a novel that is never out of one's possession, a novel that refuses to stay shut." Film rights were sold to an American motion picture company, and work proceeded slowly on the project, which was still a work-in-progress in 2004. Many reviewers have praised the work for its portrayal of an obscure and little-understood part of Japanese culture and have marveled that a white American male should write such a work.
A phenomenal best seller, this novel sold more than four million copies in English alone in a little over three years and has been translated into thirty-three languages. SIDELIGHTS: Arthur Golden made a splash when he came on the literary scene in 1997 with the publication of his novel Memoirs of a Geisha, the fictional autobiography of a Japanese geisha during the 1920s and 1930s. WORK IN PROGRESS: A historical novel set in the United States. Memoirs of a Geisha has been translated into thirty-three languages, and rights were sold for an American film adaptation in 1997 to Red Wagon Productions. Memoirs of a Geisha, Knopf ( New York, NY), 1997.ĪDAPTATIONS: Memoirs of a Geisha was recorded as an audiobook, Random House ( New York, NY), 1997. Worked for an English-language magazine in Tokyo, 1980-82. Box 419, Brookline, MA 02446.ĬAREER: Writer. Hobbies and other interests: Classical guitar.ĪDDRESSES: Home-P.O. (Japanese history), 1980 Boston University, M.A. PERSONAL: Born 1956, in Chattanooga, TN married Trudy Legge, 1982 children: two.
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