Xaviera Hollander

Passions

Vocation

Lifestyle

Notable

Traits

Indonesian prostitute and madam who, during travels to South Africa and the U.S., turned her hobby of sex into a profession, becoming an internationally famous hooker. In 1970 she opened her own house in New York, experiencing the usual and not unexpected occupational hazards. She penned her autobiography, "The Happy Hooker," in 1972. She was asked to leave the U.S. that year after New York's Knapp police-corruption hearings called attention to her expired visa. Refused re-entry for 17 years, she wrote 19 books from abroad and a regular sex-advice column in Penthouse magazine. As a baby, she spent three years in a concentration camp, then after that was raised in Holland. Receiving a good education, she spoke seven languages. Hollander says she "turned gay" around 1997, establishing a long-term relationship with a Dutch poetess called Dia. In January 2007 she married a Dutch man, Philip de Haan, in Amsterdam. In the meantime, an entire musical about her life has been written and composed by Richard Hansom and Warren Wills. Also a documentary has been released by Robert Dunlap called "Xaviera Hollander: Portrait of a Sexual Revolutionary". In her autobiography A child no more (2002) she writes about her birth and about the death of her mother, on 8 July 1999, at 7.15 pm, presumably in Amsterdam. Link to Wikipedia biography