society in Detroit, Michigan, then a booming industrial city. The first half of the novel is about Cal's family and depicts his grandparents' migration from Bursa, a city in Asia Minor, to the United States in 1922. Narrator and protagonist Cal Stephanides (initially called 'Callie') is an intersex man of Greek descent with 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, which causes him to have certain feminine traits.

The novel contains many allusions to Greek mythology, including creatures such as the Minotaur, half-man and half-bull, and the Chimera, a monster composed of various animal parts. It discusses the pursuit of the American Dream and explores gender identity. According to scholars, the novel's main themes are nature versus nurture, rebirth, and the differing experiences of what society constructs as polar opposites-such as those found between men and women. Primarily a coming-of-age story ( Bildungsroman) and family saga, the 21st century gender novel chronicles the effect of a mutated gene on three generations of a Greek family, causing momentous changes in the protagonist's life. The author decided to write Middlesex after reading the 1980 memoir Herculine Barbin and finding himself dissatisfied with its discussion of intersex anatomy and emotions.

It is not an autobiography unlike the protagonist, Eugenides is not intersex. Its characters and events are loosely based on aspects of Eugenides' life and observations of his Greek heritage. The book is a bestseller, with more than four million copies sold since its publication. Middlesex is a Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by Jeffrey Eugenides published in 2002.

Middlesex novel review