The Autobiography of Red

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

National book Critics Circle Award Finalist 

"Anne Carson is, for me, the most exciting poet writing in English today." — Michael Ondaatje

"This book is amazing--I haven't discovered any writing in years so marvelously disturbing." — Alice Munro            

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The award-winning poet Anne Carson reinvents a genre in Autobiography of Red, a stunning work that is both a novel & a poem, both an unconventional re-creation of an ancient Greek myth & a wholly original coming-of-age story set in the present.Geryon, a young boy who is also a winged red monster, reveals the volcanic terrain of his fragile, tormented soul in an autobiography he begins at the age of five. 

As he grows older, Geryon escapes his abusive brother & affectionate but ineffectual mother, finding solace behind the lens of his camera & in the arms of a young man named Herakles, a cavalier drifter who leaves him at the peak of infatuation. When Herakles reappears years later, Geryon confronts again the pain of his desire & embarks on a journey that will unleash his creative imagination to its fullest extent. 

By turns whimsical & haunting, erudite & accessible, richly layered & deceptively simple, Autobiography of Red is a profoundly moving portrait of an artist coming to terms with the fantastic accident of who he is.

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"A profound love story . . . sensuous & funny, poignant, musical and tender." — The New York Times Book Review

“You won’t need a history degree to wrap yourself inside Carson’s stirring interpretation of Stesichoros’s fragmented Geryoneis poem, but you might need a tissue.” — Mark Alan Burger, Vanity Fair

"A deeply odd & immensely engaging book. . . . [Carson] exposes with passionate force the mythic underlying the explosive everyday." — The Village Voice