The Nobel Prize in Literature, 2026 laureate

Anne Carson

A place to start: Autobiography of Red

Anne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist and translator who trained as a classicist, and her books treat ancient Greek writing as a living conversation partner. Autobiography of Red retells the myth of the red-winged monster Geryon as a modern coming-of-age love story in verse; Nox is an elegy for her brother made as a folded book in a box; her versions of Sappho and the Greek tragedians are widely read. The Academy honoured her for inventing new literary forms in dialogue with the classical past, and Autobiography of Red is the natural place to begin.