The Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded to Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson, the Swedish Academy announced. The academy praised her "bold and inventive oeuvre" which, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.
The prize, widely regarded as the most prestigious award in global literature, recognizes a lifetime's body of work. The winner receives 12 million Swedish kronor (£900,000). Ingrid Carlberg, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said she phoned Carson shortly before the announcement. Carson was in Iceland, listening to the wind, and was "taken by surprise but very happy."
Born in 1950 in Toronto, Carson moves freely between poetry, prose and translation, drawing heavily on ancient Greek literature and mythology. She has taught classics at Princeton, New York University and McGill University in Montreal. Her win makes her the 19th woman among 123 literature laureates. Her best-known work, *Autobiography of Red* (1998), is a novel in verse that reimagines the myth of Geryon as the story of a modern teenager navigating heartbreak and desire. In 2001 she became the first woman to win the T.S. Eliot Prize, for *The Beauty of the Husband*.
Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Literature, said Carson had "broken away from lyrical poetry bound to the narrative self." The academy noted that her work centres on "the intersection between the philologist's obsession with words and the poet's desire for new meaning," with the etymology of words as "the starting point for all her work."
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