Claude Jasmin, in his mid-fifties, has produced over thirty books in the last twenty-five years. He is one of the most prolific and popular writers in Quebec, and though not always praised by critics, he has built up a large and faithful body of readers, many of them attracted to his works by the adaptation of some of them for television.

Jasmin grew up in a modest French and Italian district of Montreal (Rue Saint-Denis near Jean-Talon) and spent summer holidays at Pointe-Calumet on the Lac des Deux Montagnes. These settings of his childhood are evoked in his autobiographical writings and also appear in many of his works of fiction. His father, Edouard Jasmin, an importer of Oriental goods turned restaurant keeper, was an amateur artist and ceramist. Jasmin abandoned his classical studies at the Collège André Grasset to follow in his father's footsteps, completing...