Amorous Woman

An American woman's sexual awakening in Japan, testing the limits of love and sensual pleasure. 

Travel to a rustic hot-springs inn where anything goes after midnight, don the gorgeous kimono of a Japanese bride, romp in the dungeon room of a rent-by-the-hour love hotel, act out an orgy straight from manga porn, and slip inside Kyoto’s most exclusive restaurants for exquisite dinners of seduction . . .

Amorous Woman is the story of an American woman’s love affair with Japan and her intimate relationships with the many men and women she meets along the way. In this modern reimagining of Ihara Saikaku’s bawdy 17th-century novel of the pleasure quarters, The Life of an Amorous Woman, Donna George Storey offers a graphic, erotic tale that challenges everything we think we know about Japan.

We first meet the perceptive, wise-cracking Lydia after she has returned from Japan. While there she explored love and sex in her roles as English teacher, wife, bar hostess, and the mistress of a wealthy man. Now wiser, changed by the experience and shaken by her passion into a new maturity and understanding of herself as a woman, she commits herself to a new celibacy. But when she meets a pair of attractive American students at a workshop and begins to answer their questions about Japan, she finds herself recounting her exploits. This is where we meet her, spinning out her tale, the contemporary Amorous Woman detailing every moment of ecstasy and adventure and becoming less and less resolute that she can ever truly give up love.

Described by critics as “rich with sensual detail, humor, and emotional complexity,” “hard to put down,” and “literary erotica at its best,” the novel received rave reviews when it was first published in 2007. Now available again as a digital-only publication, Amorous Woman will change your image of Japan—and erotica—forever.

Note:This book is for mature readers.