By Sumayya
STOCKHOLM: Canadian poet and author Anne Carson won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature “for her brave and creative work that, in fun talks with old traditions, has built fresh setups for modern books,” the award-giving group announced on Thursday.
The prize is given by the Swedish Academy and is worth 12 million Swedish crowns ($1.2 million). Canadian poet and writer Carson’s work frequently mixes poetry, story writing, talks and translation in a rule-breaking style.
She is widely known for her translations of old Greek books, which deeply guides her work that spans from opera lines to book reviews and story poetry books such as “Autobiography of Red” from 1998.
Her style is shown in “Norma Jeane Baker of Troy” from 2019, a theater piece which mixes the stories of Helen of Troy in Euripides’ play “Helen” and Marilyn Monroe.
Carson takes a spot next to famous stars such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Alice Munro and Ernest Hemingway as a winner of the prize, which frequently splits views among book fans.
The Academy has been attacked for ignoring some of the book giants of the past 120 years such as Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf and Jorge Luis Borges, blamed for bypassing US writers – though it gave the prize to singer-musician Bob Dylan in 2016 – and accused of being too unknown in its picks.
Defenders say the Academy has made popular choices, such as Colombia’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1982 and Doris Lessing in 2007, arguing that part of its job is to point out lesser-known book paths and push readers to expand their minds.
Set up in the final paper of Swedish dynamite maker and businessman Alfred Nobel, the prizes for success in books, science and peace have been given out since 1901.
Last year’s prize was won by Hungarian author Laszlo Krasznahorkai, labeled the “master of the world’s end” by American critic Susan Sontag.
