Literary Fiction · ThoughtfulCal tells the story of his Greek family, from Asia Minor in 1922 to Detroit
Middlesex
A narrator born twice: first as a girl in Detroit, then as a boy
Cal says he was born twice: once as a girl in Detroit in 1960, and again as a boy after an emergency-room visit in 1974. To explain how that happened, he tells the story of three generations of his Greek-American family, from a village in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, through the 1967 riots and into suburban Grosse Pointe. A hidden family secret and an inherited genetic condition explain Cal's journey.
More about this book
Who
Cal Stephanides, an intersex man of Greek descent, who tells the story. He starts by describing a genetic mutation he inherited.
World
Much of the twentieth century, mainly in Detroit. The early scenes are set in 1922 in a village above Bursa, in Asia Minor, now Turkey. Cal's grandparents flee the Great Fire of Smyrna and settle in Detroit, where the family pursues the American dream.
What makes it different
It is written as a memoir and moves between first- and third-person narration. Eugenides was inspired by the 1980 memoir Herculine Barbin and worked on the book for nine years. It draws on his Greek heritage but is not autobiographical, and it draws on Greek mythology.
Feel
A family saga and coming-of-age story that mixes humor and irony with serious themes. It won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and has sold more than four million copies.