Memoirs Of A Geisha by Arthur Golden

Memoirs Of A Geisha is a novel by American author Arthur Golden, published in 1997. The novel Memoirs Of A Geisha, told in first person perspective, tells the fictional story of a geisha working in Kyoto, Japan, before and after World War II.
Sakamoto Chiyo, a girl from the poverty-stricken fishing village of Yoroido on the coast of the Sea of Japan, is sold into an okiya (a geisha boarding house) in Gion, the most prominent hanamachi (geisha district) in Kyoto when she is nine years old. Her mother is dying of bone cancer and her older sister Satsu is not sold into the Nitta okiya with her. Determined to run away, Chiyo lives in the okiya as a geisha alongside another young girl Pumpkin, the elderly and grumbling Granny, the money-obsessed Mother, the okiya's mistress, and Auntie, a failed geisha. Also living in the okiya is the famous ill-mannered geisha Hatsumomo who promptly doesn't like her because she sees Chiyo as a possible rival and goes out of her way to drive her out. Despite Pumpkin and Auntie's waring not to run away, she plans to leave the okiya and settle back to her sister Satsu, but is caught when she falls off the roof and breaks her arm. Enraged at her for dishonoring the okiya, Mother stops investing in Chiyo and makes her pay off her increasing debts as her slave.
Several years later, a depressed Chiyo is given money by a strange, but kind man(the Chairman) while walking on the street. She donates it to the Gion Shrine, praying to become a geisha in the hopes of seeing him again... (Summary by Wikipedia)