A rollicking family epic like no other, Middlesex follows three generations of the Stephanides family from 1920s Greece to Detroit in the mid to late 20th century to contemporary Berlin. Brother and sister Lefty and Desdemona flee the crumbling Ottoman Empire in 1922; by the time their ship docks in New York they are husband and wife. The narrator of this funny and humane tale is their grandchild Cal, who as a result of their unusual liaison was born a girl but grows into a man.





... full of incident and hilarity and feeling, with... a great cast of characters. It's juicy, beautifully written... It is as good as American fiction has been in the longest time. - Australian Financial Review





... so well-paced and so effortlessly dramatic... an enormously entertaining epic... It's a miracle. - The Bulletin





The rite-of-passage of the narrator, Cal Stephanides, is the most intimate and convincing piece of characterisation in a novel that is full of memorable characters....an impressive, promise-fulfilling work....Middlesex is a great read. - The Sydney Morning Herald





... an epic with shades of myth and tragedy....this feast of a novel is thrilling in the scope of its imagination and surprising in its tenderness. Cal is one of recent fiction's most endearing characters. - Who Weekly





Expansive and radiantly generous... a colossal act of curiosity, of imagination and of love. - New York Times Book Review





Superb... a warm and beautifully written novel that illuminates the part of the human soul that even biology cannot reach. - Sunday Times





A sweeping, funny, and tender story of a girl's unlikely journey to manhood... Eugenides has emerged as the great American writer that many of us suspected him of being. - Los Angeles Times Book Review


Awards





Winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Oprah Book Club June 2007 selection.


About Jeffrey Eugenides





Jeffrey Eugenides' debut novel, The Virgin Suicides, was published in 1993 and was made into a feature film by Sofia Coppola. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, Best American Short Stories and Granta's Best of Young American Novelists. Middlesex, his second novel, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2003.