[비즈한국] Sales of books by Canadian poet Anne Carson, who was announced as this year's Nobel Prize in Literature laureate on the 8th, have surged.
According to Kyobo Book Centre, online sales of Anne Carson's books increased 138-fold over the 12-hour period from 8 p.m. on the 8th, when the Nobel Prize news broke, to 9 a.m. on the 9th, compared to the previous day. During the same period, sales on Yes24 also rose 184 times compared to the day before.
Carson's novel, ‘Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse,’ climbed to No. 1 on the real-time bestseller list that day. Sales skyrocketed 367-fold compared to the previous day. ‘Autobiography of Red’ maintained its No. 1 spot on the bestseller lists of three major online bookstores—Kyobo Book Centre, Yes24, and Aladin—on the 10th as well.
Considered Carson’s signature work, ‘Autobiography of Red’ is a reinterpretation of the episode involving the tenth labor of Hercules from Greek mythology. Instead of Hercules, the protagonist is the red monster Geryon, whom Hercules shot and killed with an arrow. When it was published in the U.S. in 1998, it was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year."
Another of Carson's major works, ‘The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos,’ follows the narrator—the "wife"—as she meets a man, falls in love, marries, experiences betrayal, and goes through a divorce, with the process flowing over the intense imagery of the tango. Inspired by the poetry of Romantic poet John Keats, each chapter begins with lines quoted from Keats's poems, notes, and letters. With this work, Carson became the first woman to win the T. S. Eliot Prize.
‘Nox,’ published in 2010, is an essay in which Carson commemorates her brother Michael, who went missing in Denmark in 2000. While translating ancient poetry, she wrote down the thoughts that came to mind alongside her brother’s death, drew, printed, tore or sharply cut out the pages, and glued them together into a single handmade book. Carson has explained, "When he died, I made an epitaph for him in the form of a book. This is a replica as close to that as possible."
Nine of Anne Carson's books have been translated and published in Korea. Currently, all online stock has been depleted, and they are available for pre-order.
Anne Carson, the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature winner, was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1950. She is a poet, novelist, classical Greek scholar, and translator who continues to be active in creative writing, translation, and lecturing. The Swedish Academy, which selects the Nobel Prize in Literature, praised her body of work as "a bold and creative world of literature that has created new forms for modern literature through a lively dialogue with the classical tradition." Carson, who heard the news of her win while sweeping her kitchen floor, expressed her surprise by saying, "It feels a bit crazy." She has announced plans to donate the prize money of 12 million Swedish kronor (approximately 1.6 billion KRW).
This year’s Nobel Prize announcements began on the 5th with the Physiology or Medicine prize and will conclude on the 12th with the announcement of the Economics prize. The awards ceremony will be held in Stockholm, Sweden, on December 10 (the Peace Prize is held at the Oslo City Hall in Norway). The winners by category are as follows.
△Physiology or Medicine: Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, Georg Nagel △Chemistry: Henri B. Kagan, Soai Kenso △Physics: Francis Halzen △Literature: Anne Carson △Peace: Navi Pillay