Les Insolences de Frère Untel burst on the Quebec literary scene in 1960, helping to ignite the Quiet Revolution that swept the province in the decade that followed. The book originated as a series of letters from Jean-Paul Desbiens to André Laurendeau, editor of the Montreal daily Le Devoir, letters which Desbiens was persuaded to publish under the pseudonym Frère Untel (Brother Anonymous). Anonymity was essential to preserve Desbiens's position as a teaching brother in the Marist order, which knew him as Frère Pierre-Jérôme.

Desbiens, the son of Adélard Desbiens, a logger and day laborer, and Alberta Bouchard Desbiens, was born in modest circumstances in 1927 at Métabet-chouan in the Lac Saint-Jean area of Quebec. His early education was at the parish school of Saint-Jérôme. In 1941 he entered the Marist seminary...