His third novel, Een schitterend gebrek, translated as In Lucia's Eyes (2003), was a return to the historical novel, about Casanova's first lover, Lucia, who, he reports in his Memoirs, inexplicably abandoned him in his youth, only to resurface years later as a hideous prostitute in an Amsterdam brothel. His second book, De droom van de leeuw, (2002), is a novelized version of his relationship with the Dutch actress and novelist Rosita Steenbeek in Rome, where Steenbeek became the last lover of the Italian director Federico Fellini. In November 2007, an opera based on the novel premiered in Rotterdam, with an English libretto by Arthur Japin and music by the British composer Jonathan Dove. Based in part on Japin's own traumatic youth, and based on ten years of research in the Netherlands, Germany, Africa, and Indonesia, the book became a bestseller and is considered to be a classic of modern Dutch literature. His first novel, De zwarte met het witte hart (1997), translated as The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi, was the story of two Ashanti princes, Kwame Poku and Kwasi Boachi, who were taken from today's Ghana and given as gifts to the Dutch king Willem II in 1837. He was also briefly an opera singer at De Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam. After a difficult childhood - his father killed himself when he was twelve years old - Japin entered the Kleinkunstacademie in Amsterdam, where he trained as an actor. His parents were Bert Japin, a teacher and writer of detective novels, and Annie Japin-van Arnhem.
Arthur Valentijn Japin (born 26 July 1956 in Haarlem, the Netherlands) is a renowned Dutch novelist.
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