The Passion: a novel, part two of the trilogy SLEEPING WITH BOYS

ISBN-13: 9781451576641 / Angielski / Miękka / 2010 / 418 str.

Max Kreijn

Opis

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.