It's here! Browse the 2024 Penguin Christmas gift guide
Red Doc>

Red Doc>

Summary

In a stunningly original mix of poetry, drama, and narrative, Anne Carson brings the red-winged Geryon from Autobiography of Red, now called ‘G’, into manhood, and through the complex labyrinths of the modern age. We join him as he travels with his friend and lover ‘Sad’ (short for Sad But Great), a war veteran, and with Ida, an artist, across a geography that ranges from plains of glacial ice to idyllic green pastures; from a psychiatric clinic to the sombre house where G’s mother must face her death. Haunted by Proust, juxtaposing the hunger for flight with the longing for family and home, this deeply powerful picaresque verse invites readers on an extraordinary journey of intellect, imagination, and soul.

Reviews

  • I have never read a poet where there was such a sense that the material was so unruly it might overwhelm its creator. It is this that makes Carson exciting... She writes with spendthrift ease.
    Kate Kellaway, Observer

About the author

Anne Carson

Anne Carson was born in Canada and has been a professor of Classics for over thirty years. Her awards and honours include the T. S. Eliot Prize, a Lannan Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Griffin Prize, on two occasions, fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, and the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature 2020.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more