A new book by Leonard Cohen in October

Nearly six years after Leonard Cohen’s departure, gems continue to be unearthed from his generous archives.

Dominic Late
The Press

After The Flamea collection including many unpublished poems published in 2018, McClelland & Stewart announced Thursday the publication in the fall of a second posthumous title entitled A Ballet of Lepers (free translation : A ballet of lepers), prepared by specialist in Cohen’s work, Alexandra Pleshoyano. When it was released in French by Éditions du Seuil, The Flame had been billed as Cohen’s “testament book”. Here is a new testament.

The work will consist of fifteen short stories, a radio-drama as well as the unpublished short novel which gives its title to the book, the story of a thirty-five-year-old orphan, who will have to accommodate in the small room he praises his grandfather, whom he did not know existed.

In a doctoral thesis submitted to the University of Ottawa in 2014, Natalia Vesselova presented this early work as a mediation on the difficulty for immigrants to stay in touch with their past. Completed in 1957, the manuscript had at the time been refused by all the publishing houses to which it had been submitted. The singer career of the creator of So Long, Marianne would only begin about ten years later.

According to the author himself, A Ballet of Lepers would be a “probably better” novel than Ladies gamess (The Favorite Game), his first fiction launched in 1963. The various other texts of A Ballet of Lepers were written between 1956, in Montreal, and 1961, on the island of Hydra in Greece.

“Leonard said before his death that the masterpiece of his life was his archives, which he meticulously preserved so that admirers and scholars could one day discover them,” his former manager said in a statement. , now administrator of his estate, Robert Kory.

The Canadian edition of A Ballet of Lepers is expected in English, on October 11, 2022, at McClelland and Stewart. No details about a French translation are currently available.