Before the Rubicon

As winter settles over the university campus of Louvain-la-Neuve, He stands on the edge of his first great crossing. It is December 1985, and the new year will bring challenges he has never faced before: his first university exams, the first true tests of adulthood, and a deepening relationship with the brilliant, unpredictable, and fiercely loving Stéphanie.

What begins as a season of study soon becomes a journey through desire, loyalty, friendship, and self-discovery. Surrounded by a circle of sharp-tongued, confident young women who alternately protect him, tease him, and push him beyond his limits, He learns that growing up is rarely gentle. Their affection is genuine, their games perilous, and their expectations impossible to escape.

Between nights of wild parties on the frozen coast, days of intense revision, and encounters that blur the line between dream and reality, He navigates the fragile terrain between boyhood and manhood. Each step brings him closer to the moment he will have to cross his own Rubicon, a symbolic point of no return, where he must decide who he wants to become.

Before the Rubicon is the sixth volume in The Freshmen cycle, a literary, intimate coming-of-age saga set in mid-1980s Belgium. Blending tenderness, humour, sensuality, and introspection, it captures a generation on the cusp of change - and the young man learning, often painfully, to find his place in a world that suddenly asks him to grow up.

A story of love.
A story of friendship.
A story of first steps into adulthood.

The die is cast - whether he is ready or not.