Middlesex (novel)
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| Author | Jeffrey Eugenides |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | William Webb (Bloomsbury paperback) |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (UK) Farrar, Straus and Giroux (USA) |
Publication date | 7 October 2002 |
| Publication place | America |
| Media type | Print (paperback and hardback) and audio-CD |
| Pages | 529 (Bloomsbury paperback) |
| ISBN | [[Special:BookSources/ISBN+0374199698+%28Farrar%2C+Straus+and+Giroux+hardcover%29+%3Cbr%3E%0AISBN+0747561621+%28Bloomsbury+paperback%29 |ISBN 0374199698 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover) ISBN 0747561621 (Bloomsbury paperback)]] Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character |
Middlesex (ISBN 0374199698) is a novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. It was published in 2002 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2003.
The narrator and protagonist, Calliope Stephanides (later called Cal), is an intersexed person of Greek descent, has 5-alpha-reductase deficiency. The bulk of the novel is devoted to telling his coming-of-age story growing up in Detroit, Michigan in the late 20th century. This story, however, is intertwined with many aspects of a family saga, the era's zeitgeist and contemporary history, thus making it an arguable candidate for The Great American Novel.
Plot summary
Template:Spoiler The novel begins in the small Greek village of his grandparents, where brother Lefty and sister Desdemona fall in love. The two are forced to emigrate to America during the 1922 war between Greece and Turkey. Leaving behind their village, they are free to marry without risking the social stigma. They meet their cousin Lina and her husband in Detroit, Michigan.
Lefty and Desdemona have a son, Milton, who marries Lina's daughter, Tessie. Milton and Tessie, who are second cousins, have two children. "Chapter Eleven" (possibly a reference to the fact that he eventually bankrupts the family business) is a normal boy, but Calliope is intersexed, although the family doesn't know about it for many years, and is raised as a girl.
At fourteen, Calliope falls in love with her female best friend (referred to in the novel as "The Obscure Object") and has her first sexual experiences with both sexes. After an accident, a doctor discovers that Calliope is intersexed, and she is taken to a clinic in New York where she undergoes a series of tests and examinations. Faced with the prospect of sex reassignment surgery, Calliope runs away and takes the male identity of Cal. Cal hitchhikes cross-country, finally arriving in San Francisco, where he becomes an attraction in a burlesque show.
External links
- The New York Review of Books review of Middlesex
- Excerpt of Middlesex
- First chapter of Middlesex Free registration required.
- Middlesex at Fantastic Fiction