Lesley Downer’s mother was Chinese and her father a professor of Chinese, so she grew up in a house full of books on Asia.But it was Japan, not China, that proved the more alluring.She lived there for a total of some fifteen years.It has been an ongoing love affair.

She has written many books about the country and its culture.To research Geisha: The Secret History of a Vanishing World, she lived among the geisha and little by little found herself being transformed into one of them. Madame Saday ... Learn more