| Middlesex (novel) |
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''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, is an Intersexed person of Greek descent. She later calls himself, Cal. Specifically, he 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 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 in Detroit, Michigan and raise two children there. Their son, Milton, marries Lina's daughter, and thus his second cousin, Tessie. The pair also raise two children, one a boy who will eventually receive the nickname "Chapter Eleven," and is referred to as such through the entire novel. (Although the nickname is never explicitly explained in the novel, it is probably a reference to the fact that he eventually Bankrupts the family business.) The second child is Calliope, in whom two recessive genes meet and the effects of inbreeding become apparent. Calliope discovers the truth about her gender at fourteen shortly after her first sexual experience with her female best friend, referred to in the novel as "The Obscure Object." She is taken to a clinic in New York where she undergoes a series of tests and examinations. At the end, Calliope becomes Cal, taking on a male identity and running away. Cal hitchhikes cross-country, finally arriving in San Francisco , where he becomes an attraction in a burlesque show. EXTERNAL LINKS
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