The Flame is a stunning collection of Leonard Cohen’s last poems and writings, selected and ordered by Cohen in the final months of his life. The book contains an extensive selection from Cohen’s notebooks, featuring lyrics, prose pieces and illustrations, which he kept in poetic form throughout his life, and offers an unprecedentedly intimate look inside the life and mind of a singular artist and thinker.

An enormously powerful final chapter in Cohen’s storied literary career, The Flame showcases the full range of Leonard Cohen’s lyricism, from the exquisitely transcendent to the darkly funny. By turns devastatingly sad and winningly strange, these are the works of a poet and lyricist who has plumbed the depths of our darkest questions and come up wanting, yearning for more.

Leonard Cohen began his artistic career in 1956 with the publication of his first book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies. He went on to publish 12 more books, including two celebrated novels and gained worldwide recognition as an iconic singer-songwriter. He released 14 studio albums, including three in the last years of his life when he also became one of the most acclaimed arena performing artists in the world.

Among his numerous honours, he is the recipient of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award 2010, the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature 2011, the inaugural New England PEN Award for Excellence in Lyrics 2012, the 2016 Juno Awards for Song of the Year and Album of the Year, and he has been inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the US Songwriters Hall of Fame. He died in November 2016.