Xaviera Hollander
In 1941, the intellectual Jewish psychiatrist Mick de Vries met Germaine
Though she and her parents survived, memories of those terrible days haunted
This is the true story of the woman behind the myth - and of her parents, a Dutch
Breaking out from the comfortable world of writers and artists, physicians and
She knew that she caused them anguish: her ambition was that they would become
This book is a memorial of a loving daughter to her mother, to whose memory it is
Here is the same frankness that made The Happy Hooker such a sensation but
Schluetter, a German-born model, at a party in Amsterdam and knew
immediately that he was going to marry her. Within a month, they were
honeymooning at St. Moritz, and soon after, they moved to Indonesia,
where they hoped to be safe from the war and the anti-Semitism that was
growing in Europe. However, two months after the birth of their only child,
Xaviera, the young family was divided - the mother and daughter at one
Japanese prison camp and the father at another.
each of them in different ways for years to come. Reunited at last, the family
moved to Holland to escape further violence in Indonesia. As they resettled into
life, Xaviera began to learn more about her parents as a couple. Tender and
loving at some times, bitterly angry at others, they kept their daughter curious
about the nature of intimacy. She fell in love with her handsome and charismatic
father, and struggled with her mother's strict and forceful ways. But as time
passed she realized her father's imperfections, came to understand her mother's
fears, and began to learn more about herself as a woman. The role that sex
would come to play in her life was established early, and Hollander traces how the
lives of her extraordinary parents intertwined with her own sexual explorations.
At the same time, she reviews the friendships and romances of her inner life- not
her professional one. Readers familiar with Hollander's writing will recognize the
breathtaking frankness of her observations.
Jewish doctor in Indonesia and a glamorous German model, and of their struggle to
survive and to protect their child behind the barbed wire of Japanese prisoner camps.
As a baby, Xaviera grew up in a surreal world of torture and death - and from there,
what a contrast to adolescence in her bohemian yet bourgeois family home in
post-war Amsterdam.
psychologists, she found defiant self-expression in New York. Out of the taboo
world of sex, The Happy Hooker was born. Yet, even at her moments of most
flagrant revolt, beneath the mask of Xaviera Hollander, there lived Xaviera de Vries,
the child who desperately wanted to prove herself to her parents.
proud of her and of what she would ultimately achieve. Her father did not live to see
the transformation of Xaviera from the rebel who dared to tear the veil of hypocritical
prudery from sex into the most successful producer of English language drama in Holland
but her mother survived to rejoice in this new career of Xaviera.
dedicated. It is an honest record of suffering and of death, but overwhelmingly it is
an account of life and of love, and amid the tears, there is much laughter.
this book exposes the raw emotions, the triumphs and tribulations of parents and
daughter, three exceptional people.