Middlesex

by Jeffrey Eugenides

Eugenides’ million-copy-selling novel Middlesex, in which schoolgirl Calliope Stephanides is discovered at puberty to be intersex, turns into a sprawling family saga, as it slips back in time to follow the transmission of the responsible gene through several generations of a family of Greek immigrants to the United States. Of its writing, Eugenides once recalled: “The entire structure for the novel appeared in my head, fully formed, as ravishing as a crystal palace on a distant hill.”