Middlesex
Eugenides, Jeffrey
From Peruse the Stacks, Gig Harbor, WA, U.S.A.
AbeBooks Seller Since 28 February 2020
From Peruse the Stacks, Gig Harbor, WA, U.S.A.
AbeBooks Seller Since 28 February 2020
About this Item
Jacket price clipped, else fine. First print, signed on title page. Seller Inventory # 637
Bibliographic Details
Title: Middlesex
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux, U.S.A.
Publication Date: 2002
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
Signed: Signed by Author(s)
Edition: 1st Edition.
About this title
The book's wily narrator and central character, Calliope Stephanides (named after the muse of epic poetry) is a hermaphrodite raised as a girl who comes to realise she is happier as a boy and is now living as a man in contemporary Berlin. Cal's tale begins, appropriately enough, in Greece (or more precisely Asia Minor)--an Aegean Strasbourg whose sovereignty is claimed by Greece and Turkey. In 1922 brother and sister Lefty and Desdemona Stephanides escaped their war-torn homeland and arrived, as man and wife, in Detroit, America. It is this coupling that ultimately begets their grandchild Calliope and her ambiguous sexuality, as she, or rather by then he, sanguinely notes:
Some people inherit houses; others painting or highly insured violin bows. Still others get Japanese tansu or a famous name. I got a recessive gene on fifth chromosome and some very rare family jewels indeed.As Cal recounts the experiences of the Stephanides clan in their new land--from the Depression to Nixon--he unfurls his own symbiotic odyssey to a new sex. Cal's narrative voice is arch, humorous and self aware, continually drawing attention to its authorial sleights of hand, but never exasperating. This is big, brainy novel--The Oracle of Delphi puts in an unlikely appearance in the middle of a teenage tryst--but one full of compassion. Eugenides' astonishingly rich story persistently engages the heart as well as the mind. --Travis Elborough
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
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