The Favourite Game

This warm and lyrical semi-autobiographical first novel by singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen charts the coming of age of Lawrence Breavman, the only son of a Jewish Montreal family. 'Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal.

A scar is what happens when the world is made flesh.' Lawrence Breavman seeks two things: love and beauty. Beginning with the innocent games of delicious misadventure with first love Lisa and the absorbing wanders through Montreal with best friend Krantz, Breavman's tale is a distant echo of 'Catcher in the Rye' and 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' - injected with 1960s aesthetics and Cohen's unique poetry. As Breavman grows into a young man, the emerging writer continues his quest for beauty and love, finding himself in the arms of Shell and a burgeoning realisation of his own talent for appreciating majesty in the grotesque.

Semi-autobiographical, the angst and beauty of Cohen's voice deftly channel the painful confusion of the journey into adulthood, and the friendships, wars and lovers that are our guides.

Leonard Cohen is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry, 'Let Us Compare Mythologies', in 1956 and his first novel, the semi-autobiographical 'The Favourite Game', in 1963. Cohen has recorded and collaborated on numerous albums, and published several books of poetry and an experimental and critically-acclaimed novel, 'Beautiful Losers' (1966). Cohen is renowned as one of the most influential singer-songwriters of the century (over 1,000 renditions of his songs have been recorded) and was inducted into the American Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2008. Lou Reed has described Cohen as among the 'highest and most influential echelon of songwriters'.
After years of seclusion as a Buddhist monk, Cohen is now back in the limelight with a sell-out world tour in 2008, the Perennial re-release of his novels and speculation of an album of new songs on the cards. Leonard Cohen lives in Montreal, Canada.