Middlesex tells the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City and the race riots of 1967 before moving out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret, and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.
Editorial Reviews
“Part Tristram Shandy, part Ishmael, part Holden Caulfield, Cal is a wonderfully engaging narrator. . . A deeply affecting portrait of one family's tumultuous engagement with the American twentieth century.” ―The New York Times
“Expansive and radiantly generous. . . Deliriously American.” ―The New York Times Book Review (cover review)
“A towering achievement....[Eugenides] has emerged as the great American writer that many of us suspected him of being.” ―Los Angeles Times Book Review (cover review)
“A big, cheeky, splendid novel...it goes places few narrators would dare to tread...lyrical and fine.” ―The Boston Globe
About the Author
Jeffrey Eugenides was born in Detroit and attended Brown and Stanford Universities. His first novel, The Virgin Suicides, was published by Farrar Straus & Giroux to great acclaim in 1993, and he has received numerous awards for his work. In 2003, Jeffrey Eugenides received The Pulitzer Prize for his novel Middlesex (Picador, 2003). Middlesex, which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, France's Prix Medicis, has sold over 1 million copies.