The 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to Canadian Anne Carson

The 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to Canadian poet Anne Carson, the Swedish Academy announced this Thursday at 1 p.m. French time. Meeting in Stockholm, it designated its 119th winner. It is the largest literary award in the world, and the most endowed with 12 million Swedish crowns, or more than a million euros. She is the second Canadian woman to be awarded the Nobel. In 2013, it was the short story writer Alice Munro who was honored by the Swedish Academy.

Anne Carson was born in Canada in 1950. She taught ancient Greek, a discipline of which we find traces in her work. It is little translated in France, in relation to its literary production. Happy coincidence for the small publishing house Arche which is publishing, on November 6, the next Nobel 2026 essay: Bittersweet Eros, presented as “a philosophical-poetic exploration of desire summoning the literature of ancient Greece as well as The Waves of Virginia Woolf.” It is translated from English (Canada) by Vanasay Khamphommala.

Arche publisher also published its latest collection of poetry, Men in their lost hours, last year. The translation is this time signed by Fabienne Durand-Bogaert. A text which interweaves comments from Sappho, Catullus or Emily Dickinson, visions, epitaphs, as well as contemporary rewritings of all kinds, a kaleidoscopic and hybrid work in which the author brings together figures such as Catherine Deneuve, Sigmund Freud or Jean-Luc Godard.

Margaret Atwood, the forgotten one of the Swedish Academy

The Swedish Academy jury has the art of surprising. Many experts do not understand that if it was necessary to choose a female and Canadian writer why not have chosen the great legend Margaret Atwood whose masterful work has spanned the entire planet, notably with The Handmaid's Tale.

In 2025, the prize went to Laszlo Krasznahorkai. The Hungarian has written numerous short stories and some of his books have been adapted for cinema. In 2006, one of these major works (published in 1989 in Hungary) was translated into French and entitled La Mélancolie de la résistance. Several of his books have been translated into French: Guerre et guerre (1999); To the north by a mountain, to the south by a lake, to the west by paths, to the east by a stream (2003); Seiobo came down to earth (2008); The Last Wolf (2009); Baron Wenckheim is back (2016) and finally Small Works for a Palace (2018).

Although no criterion other than literary quality is officially taken into account in the choice of the Nobel, the Academy has taken care, in recent years, to crown women, representatives of countries or continents of little or no distinction, and authors in languages ​​other than those from Europe. Since its creation, the Nobel Prize for Literature has been dominated by Western men and letters. Among the 121 winners designated so far, only 18 women have won the prize, half of them since 2000. Writers in English, French, German and Spanish have accumulated three-quarters of the prizes and the Western world has around a hundred Nobel Prizes in literature.