You’re thirteen years old and boarding school is a prison that teaches nothing but dead knowledge. Heart filled with gloom and turmoil, you escape to the bay of your childhood, to your three pines and the soothing sounds of Nature. But you share a dark secret with your father. You know you have to face life, but haven’t a clue how. And you don’t believe those who say everything will change from now on, that we’ll soon be masters in our own house. You’re pinned to the floor by the grave certainty everything’s over before it started. Fortunately, you have friends who understand the depths of your anguish, and hours of solitude you spend reading and dreaming. Entranced by a book painting the Laurentian flora, you write your first poems, you discover words you suspect will make you free someday. And you discover music that rekindles your hopes, confidence and desires. Filled with poetic and sensual metaphors, What Will I Become Until I Die is a stunning portrait of adolescence, of its doubts and sudden flashes of anger. A glowing panegyric to Nature, it’s the key to understanding Robert Lalonde’s literary work.

An actor, playwright and translator, Robert Lalonde is one of Quebec’s leading novelists. His previous novels published in translation by Ekstasis Editions include The Ogre of Grand Remous, The Devil Incarnate, One Beautiful Day to Come, The Whole Wide World, Seven Lakes Further North and The Last Indian Summer.