Anne Carson, 2026 Nobel laureate in Literature: where to start
Canadian poet, essayist and translator, awarded the prize “for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature”.
Who is Anne Carson?
Born in Toronto in 1950, she is a classicist who has taught Greek and Latin at universities in Canada and the United States and translated Sappho, Euripides and Sophocles. Her work blends poetry, essay, verse novel and theatre, and usually starts from a myth or a Greek word to write about very present things: desire, grief, love falling apart. Before the Nobel she won the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature (2020) and was the first woman to win the T. S. Eliot Prize for poetry.
Where to start
The best way in. A novel in verse that turns a Greek myth, the red monster Geryon, into the story of a shy boy and his first love.
See on AmazonA marriage falling apart, told in 29 “tangos”. Narrative poetry, painful and funny.
See on AmazonAn elegy for her brother, made as a scrapbook of cut-outs, photos and the translation of a Latin poem.
See on AmazonHer translation of Sappho, keeping the gaps in the papyrus. Ideal if you are curious about Greek poetry.
See on AmazonHer first book: a brilliant essay on desire in Greek literature. For readers who enjoy ideas.
See on Amazon