Beautiful Losers

Beautiful Losers is a novel by Leonard Cohen. Published in 1966 by McClelland and Stewart, it was the Canadian writer's second novel, and precedes his career as a singer-songwriter.

The story of the 17th century Mohawk Saint Kateri Tekakwitha is interwoven with the story of a love triangle between an unnamed anglophobe Canadian folklorist; his Native wife, Edith, who has committed suicide; and his best friend, the mystical F, a member of Parliament and leader in the Quebec separatist movement, who dies after being imprisoned in an institute for the criminally insane.

The complex novel makes use of a vast range of literary techniques, and a wealth of allusion and symbolism. It is noted for its excesses of language, technique and sexuality. Very much a product of the 1960s, it is filled with the mysticism, radicalism, sexuality and drug-taking emblematic of the era.

Cohen wrote the novel in two eight-month spurts while living on the Greek island of Hydra in 1964 and 1965. He fasted and consumed amphetamines to focus his creativity on the novel. Despite a lavish rollout, sales were disappointing, and critics were initially unsympathetic or hostile. The book gained critical and commercial attention only after Cohen had given up novel-writing and turned to songwriting and performing, upon which his fame rests today. It is now seen as having introduced postmodernism to Canadian literature. It has become a steady seller, and is considered a part of the Canadian literary canon.