The instant #1 national bestselling final work from Leonard Cohen, Canada's most celebrated poet and an artist whose audience spans generations and whose work is known and loved throughout the world.

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

“[The Flame] is . . . a kaleidoscopic archive, a mix-tape of emotions that reveals Cohen’s fears and vulnerability with an unusually raw candour. After 10 books of poetry and two novels, it reminds us that the music man who taught the world to scale the chords of Hallelujah still considered writing his first and ultimate vocation.” —Maclean’s

“Leonard Cohen does not use language to pose, startle or to reinvent. Words are his old comrades, and see him through to the end.” —The Guardian

“The Flame is Leonard Cohen’s parting gift to the world. And like the best gifts, it’s thoughtful, nicely packaged and contains an element of surprise.” —Ottawa Citizen

“In the pages of The Flame, Leonard Cohen feels more present than ever.” —Gazette (Montreal)

“A posthumous balm . . . All of Cohen’s work has a raw, straight-to-the-heart intensity―reach for this the next time you need inspiration for a wedding toast that will leave them gutted, or any other moment you need a little sustenance for the soul.”—Vogue

“Cohen’s final volume shows his poetic soul. If you know the man only because of ‘Hallelujah’ or ‘Suzanne,’ pick up The Flame and warm yourself within its pages.”—Washington Post

“A kind of farewell tribute by the poet-prophet [and] offers ample evidence of his abiding sense of humor . . . Though he claimed not to know the origins of his poetry nor to be able to locate his mission, what Cohen offered his many fans and followers was the opportunity to partake of the kind of spiritual experience that makes it possible for us to feel, if only for a moment, that we are not alone.”―Los Angeles Review of Books

“In The Flame, an aging artist struggles with questions of death and legacy―and tries not to take them too seriously, true to his claim never to do so . . . If [this is] how long it takes to say ‘so long’ to someone beautiful, we’ll be listening to Cohen―still smirking and smiling―for decades to come, with this collection as our companion.”—Spectator

“Poignant and brave, lit up with flashes of anger, this is a luminous collection and classic Cohen.”―Booklist (starred review)

“Cohen was a poet before he was a musician, and with this posthumous collection his career completes its circle.”—Financial Times (Best Books of 2018)