Xaviera Hollander, born in 1943 in Indonesia, is a former call girl and madam. In 1968, she left her job as the secretary of the Dutch consulate in Manhattan to become a call girl, where she made $1,000 a night. A year later she opened her own brothel called the Vertical Whorehouse and soon became New York City's leading madam. In 1971, she was arrested for prostitution by New York police and was forced to leave the U.S.
She is best known from the book The Happy Hooker: My Own Story (1971) that she co-authored with Robin Moore and Yvonne Dunleavy. The book was notable for its frankness at the time and is considered a landmark of positive writing about sex. Hollander details in the book her life as a liberal and open minded girl. Hollander has since written a number of other books and produced plays in Amsterdam. For 35 years she wrote an advice column for Penthouse magazine called Call Me Madam.
