Arthur Golden is the writer of the bestselling novel Memoirs of a Geisha. A member of the Ochs-Sulzberger family (owners of the New York Times), Golden grew up on Lookout Mountain, Georgia, and attended Lookout Mountain Elementary School in Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. He spend his middle and high school years at the Baylor School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, graduating in 1974. He attended Harvard College and received a degree in art history, specializing in Japanese art. In 1980, he earned an M.A. in Japanese history at Columbia University, and also learned Mandarin Chinese.
After its release in 1997, Memoirs of a Geisha spent two years on The New York Times bestseller list. It has sold more than four million copies in English and has been translated into thirty-two languages around the world.
