Beautiful Losers

Beautiful Losers (Toronto and New York, 1966; London, 1970) is a novel by Leonard Cohen. Cohen's scholar-narrator researches the history of Catherine (Kateri) Tekakwitha, an Iroquois saint, and broods over his memories of his dead Native wife, Edith, and his dead male lover, mentor and genius, the mysterious, all-knowing "F." The recreation of Catherine's ascent toward sainthood coalesces with the narrator's contemporary beatification as he descends from F's treehouse, hitchhikes to Montréal and is miraculously transformed in front of gaping crowds on St Lawrence Boulevard.

The language of Beautiful Losers plays seriously, sensually and poetically over Tekakwitha's history as a saving source of inspiration for the "beautiful loser" who invokes her life as a prayer for his own body and soul. Beautiful Losers has been translated into Japanese, German, Dutch, Swedish, Italian, Danish, Norwegian and Spanish, as well as French (Les Perdants magnifiques, Paris, 1972, 1973).