A crash course in Anne Carson: the books that won the Canadian author the Nobel Prize
Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. We've compiled a list of some of her most iconic books.
From poetry to nonfiction, here are some of Carson's most iconic books
Talia Kliot · CBC Books
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Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy in Stockholm announced Thursday.
Known for infusing classical philosophy with witty, ironic brilliance, the Toronto-born author and scholar is the first Canadian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature since Alice Munro in 2013.
Carson has also won other major literary prizes, including the Griffin Prize for Poetry (she's the only person to win it twice), a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur "genius grant," the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature and the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry.
Looking to brush up on her catalogue? We've compiled a list of some of Carson's most important books.
Autobiography of Red
Autobiography of Red is a book by Anne Carson. (McClelland & Stewart)
Autobiography of Red is perhaps Carson's best-known work. The 1998 book is a combination of both a poem and a novel that partially retells the Greek myth of Geryon and Herakles, infusing it with a contemporary coming-of-age story.
As the title suggests, Autobiography of Red is told as Geryon's autobiography. In it, Geryon, a red-winged monster, runs away from his complicated family to find comfort in photography. When he meets a young man named Herakles, he falls into a deep infatuation with him, only to be devastated when he leaves. But when Herakles returns suddenly a year later, Geryon must reckon with his desire and set forth on a major journey of growth.
"Herakles is that person you probably know from Saturday morning cartoons who did the famous labours. Hercules, we call him in American," said Carson in a 2011 interview on CBC's Writers & Company.
"One of his labours was to travel to the island of the supposed monster called Geryon and capture his magic red cattle. So he did that, and killed Geryon, took the cattle and succeeded. So I just changed that story a bit."
Autobiography of Red won the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award Poetry and the T.S. Eliot Prize.
Eros the Bittersweet
Eros the Bittersweet is a book by Anne Carson. (Deep Vellum)
Eros the Bittersweet is Carson's first book of literary criticism, originally published in 1986.
In the collection of essays, Carson, a classics scholar, adapts her 1981 PhD thesis to examine the concept of "eros" as it appears in classical philosophy and literature.
Eros the Bittersweet was named as one of the best 100 nonfiction books of all time by Modern Library in 1999.
Glass, Irony and God
Glass, Irony and God is a book by Anne Carson. (New Directions Publishing)
Glass, Irony and God, Carson's 1995 book, features the celebrated poem The Glass Essay, which is more than 30 pages long and tells the story of a love affair coming to an end through a reading of Emily Brontë's poetry.
In the Nobel Prize ceremony, it was praised by the Swedish Academy for demonstrating "the potential of the long poem where genre boundaries are seen to blur."
Men in the Off Hours
Men in the Off Hours is a book by Anne Carson. (Vintage)
Carson won her first Griffin Poetry Prize for Men in the Off Hours in 2001. The collection brings together historical figures from Oedipus and Emily Dickinson to St. Augustine, blending the past with the contemporary.
The Beauty of the Husband
The Beauty of the Husband is a book by Anne Carson. (Vintage Canada)
The Beauty of the Husband is a fictional essay told in what Carson calls 29 "tangos" of narrative verse, examining English poet John Keats' idea that beauty is truth, and illustrating a marriage as it falls apart.
"I think beauty is a romantic ideal that works itself out in various ways and various relationships," said Carson in 2011 on CBC's Writers & Company. "It's that myth you're desiring, the one you have invented, rather than the one who exists."
With The Beauty of the Husband, Carson became the first woman to receive England's T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. The essay also won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry.
If Not, Winter
If Not, Winter is a collection of Sappho's poetry, translated by Anne Carson. (Vintage Canada)
As a scholar, Carson is widely known for her translations of the ancient Greek poet Sappho. If Not, Winter collects her translations of Sappho's poetry fragments and features the ancient Greek on facing pages.
In a 2016 interview on CBC's Writers & Company, Eleanor Wachtel asked Carson about the experience of being immersed in translation.
"It's like being on a surface with a lot of cracks in it, looking down through the cracks to something like another world down there that you can almost see, almost express, but not quite," she said.
Red Doc>
Red Doc> is a book by Anne Carson. (McClelland & Stewart)
The follow-up to Autobiography of Red, Red Doc> returns to the story of Geryon as an adult in the 21st century, now called "G."
Red Doc> follows him as he journeys with his lover, Sad, a war veteran formerly known as Herakles, and the artist Ida, to places near and far, from green pastures to a psychiatric clinic.
"I just wanted to draw them both into that state of mind of turning the page on hope," said Carson about revisiting the characters of Geryon and Herakles in a 2016 Writers & Company interview.
"After you realize hope is there to set your souls on fire, they'll have a different attitude to adventure and entering into new things. So I wanted to make them both a little bit wary, a little bit jaded and with grown-up problems."
Red Doc> won Carson her second Griffin Poetry Prize win in 2014.
"What is taken up again, more significantly than an update of Autobiography, is a daunting writer having her particular way with the language," wrote the Griffin jury in a statement.
Norma Jeane Baker of Troy
Norma Jeane Baker of Troy is a book by Anne Carson. (New Directions Publishing)
Norma Jeane Baker of Troy is a poetry collection that brings together the mythology of Helen of Troy and Marilyn Monroe, two women from different millennia whose beauty brought them power and influence, but ultimately caused them great pain.
Norma Jeane Baker of Troy won the 2020 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry and was lauded by the jury for using "irreverence to lure and wreck our concepts of time, place and subject."
Wrong Norma
Wrong Norma is a book by Anne Carson. (New Directions Publishing)
Carson's most recent title, Wrong Norma, published in 2024, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry.
Wrong Norma is a collection of prose pieces greatly varying in subject matter, from Joseph Conrad to snow and her dad. As Carson writes in the book, "The pieces are not linked. That’s why I’ve called them ‘wrong.’”
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