THE PASSION deals with Julien, a Dutch-French boy, who takes off for the end of the Swinging Sixties in London, on his 21st birthday in 1968, becomes a photographer and in one fell swoop a very famous one, for having taken a photograph of Jim Morrison of the Doors naked in a bathtub three weeks before the pop-star really drowned in a hotel-room in Paris. 'Stars in the Flesh' is his first best-selling photo-book. His search for love becomes very intense in the months after the launch of the first book. He goes on a quest and falls in love with a cockney rentboy in Malaga. They have to escape the wrath of the English gangster who owns the boy. Soon Portugal, the south of France, Holland, Denmark, England and Italy all flash past, until Julien finds another subject in Assisi, that vertige of religious righteousness. A second book of photographs, 'Temptation', enthralls his fans, but shocks and angers the higher exchelons of the Roman Catholic Church. And Julien falls for the 18-year-old star of the book. But -most of all- the writer thinks he has managed to lay bare the basic vulnerability of Julien in love. And the stubborn pursuit of Francesco, the schoolboy from Assisi, he makes into a star, using him as the innocent in the rather wicked second book, 'Temptation', first and then nurtures their relationship towards a solid block of love. Together they work on Julien's last photo-book, 'The Saffron Soil', shot in a two-hour period towards nightfall in a forest temple in Eastern Thailand. They just photograph a group of white-clad novices, capturing their longing and desires; no nudity, just these boys making love to Julien's cameras. The book turns out to be a huge bestseller. Julien retires, aged 34, while Francesco, the boy from Assisi, becomes an film-actor.
About the Author: Max Kreijn at 64 is generally considered to be one of Holland's most outstanding living realist painters. He was born in 1947 in Sittard, in the south of Holland. After completing his love-trilogy SLEEPING WITH BOYS: 'The Altar Boy', 'The Passion' and 'The Not-Quite-Frozen Lake Of Tender Hurt', written with immense pleasure in his house in Sydney, on long international flights, in the villas of dear friends in France and Spain and in his jungle-compound near the river in Bangkok, he has recently finished another two novels 'The Passing-on Of Knowledge' and 'The Book Of Daniel' and a collection of short stories, 'Diving into the Void' which have been published in 2011. He is working on his latest quasi-autobiographical novel ''T is a Pity He's a Whore', publishing-date 16 September 2012 (which -just by chance- happens to be his 65th birthday)