Beautiful losers

One of the best-known experimental novels of the 1960s, this uninhibited tale centres on the hapless members of a love triangle, and their sexual obsession and shared fascination with a mythic saint. Revolving around four central – and intrinsically flawed – characters, ‘Beautiful Losers’ is the frank and humorous story of a nameless narrator, his wife Edith, their domineering friend and mentor ‘F’ and Catherine Tekakwitha, a mythic 17th-century Mohawk virgin saint.

The complexities of this three-way love, pain and lust are sent spiralling by the death of Edith and ‘F’ at the novel’s start, leading the damaged narrator to question the nature of love, sexuality and spirituality in a series of explicit flashbacks. The extraordinary and inimitable singer-songwriter’s classic novel, this is Leonard Cohen’s most critically acclaimed literary work, echoing the dark poetry and wry humour of his timeless songs of loss, love, sex and religion. Not just an extremely funny novel, but an incredibly original and explicit examination of friendship, sex and spirituality.