The award-winning poet reinvents a genre in a stunning work that is both
a novel and a poem, both an unconventional re-creation of an ancient
Greek myth and 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 and affectionate but ineffectual mother, finding solace behind
the lens of his camera and 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 and embarks on a journey that will unleash his creative
imagination to its fullest extent. By turns whimsical and haunting,
erudite and accessible, richly layered and deceptively simple,
Autobiography of Red is a profoundly moving portrait of an artist coming
to terms with the fantastic accident of who he is.
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
"A profound love story . . . sensuous and funny, poignant, musical and
tender." --The New York Times Book Review
"A deeply odd and immensely engaging book. . . . [Carson] exposes with
passionate force the mythic underlying the explosive everyday." --The
Village Voice
