Curious about 2026 literature laureate Anne Carson but unsure which of her books to pick up first? Here Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel Committee at the Swedish Academy, gives his recommendations.

‘The Glass Essay’ (1995)

“My first unforgettable acqaintance with Anne Carson was her long poem ‘The Glass Essay’, published in the volume Glass, Irony, and God. There you can see in what way Anne Carson so skillfully has vitalised contemporary poetry. While the work is written in verse form, it is also a story about grief and unrequited love, in which the first-person narrator is a woman who has been left by her husband and visits her lonely mother in the desolate moorlands. On the journey there, she takes with her the works of her favourite author Emily Brontë, whose own moorlands and inner world are intricately woven into the text. Constructed around three lonely women sitting at a kitchen table, the poem is also turned into a critical essay. There are no fixed boundaries anymore between lyrical, narrative and critical language in this both very moving and witty text.”

Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse (1998)

“My second choice is another feat of language, the much-acclaimed work Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse, that demonstrates Carson’s extra-ordinary ability to make the classical literary tradition intensely alive today. It is a very imaginative and humorous take on Carson’s own translations of fragments by the sixth century BC Greek poet Stesíchoros on the winged monster Geryon, killed by Heracles fulfilling one of his labours. She transforms the myth to a modern Bildungsroman, where Geryon is a youngster, devoted to his mother, who falls in love with a rather vain Heracles. Ultimately, this odd couple embarks on an adventurous journey around the continent to a volcano, no doubt connected to Geryon’s dawning love life.” 

Nox (2010)

“My third choice is perhaps the most innovative of Carson’s works. She has always dreamt of a work where the self of the writer has disappeared, and here it seems to come true. Nox is as much a physical artefact as a poetical work, written in grief after having heard that her brother Michael, living since many years in foreign land. It is an epitaph in the shape of a box containing an accordion-fold-out of photographs, drawings, letters and other written texts dedicated to her dead brother. But in the box you also find Carson’s very minutine and sensitive translation of the famous elegy 101 by the Roman poet Catullus, in honour of his own departed brother, who also died on foreign soil. Nox is a work in many dimensions that never leaves the one who sees, reads and touches it. Even if the intent of Carson was to disappear in the work, it is perhaps the most personal work that she ever has created.”

Published October 2026

Nobel Prize in Literature 2026

Anne Carson

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2026 has been awarded to the Canadian author Anne Carson “for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.”

Anne Carson has, throughout her entire career, combined poetry writing with translation work and teaching at various universities. Almost all her literary production has centred upon the intersection between the philologist’s obsession with words and the poet’s desire for new meaning. She has herself identified the etymology of words as the starting point for all her work.

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