Anne Carson's Most Loyal Readers May Never Have Known She Won the Nobel Prize Until This Translator Stepped In
According to NobelPrize.org, The Nobel Prize in Literature 2026 was awarded to Anne Carson "for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature." That's all well and good--she deserves it. But in making this announcement, the Nobel committee forgot to alert Carson's largest North American audience, the common housecat. BookScan data shows that 90% of all Anne Carson's English-language titles are sold to households with three or more cats. So how will they know their favorite author just won the most prestigious prize in literature? Are they even able to read the most popular editions of Carson's work? This week's podcast recreates the Nobel Committee's announcement of Anne Carson's win in your cat's native tongue, with one critic noting its surreptitious resemblance to Carson's oft-quoted experimental work, "How Pants."
This podcast is sustained by the internationally bestselling Meow: A Novel, which has been called "pure joie de vivre, like Anne Carson at her very best."
