Middlesex
A Greek-American family saga across three generations, told by a narrator born twice, as a girl and again as a man.
When it was written
- Written
- 1997-2002
- Publication
- September 2002, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Jeffrey Eugenides spent roughly nine years on Middlesex, working on it after his debut novel The Virgin Suicides. He drew on his Greek heritage and his Detroit roots, and wrote part of it while living in Berlin, a city that also appears in the book.
The novel grew from his interest in how a family history, a national history and a private body can become one story. He combined the immigrant saga with the account of an intersex narrator, and he has said the narrator is not himself.
It was published in 2002 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2003.
What it’s about
Spoiler-freeCal Stephanides, a forty-one-year-old Greek-American diplomat in Berlin, begins with a claim: he was born twice, first as a baby girl in 1960 and again as a teenage boy in 1974. The cause, he says, is a rare recessive mutation, and to explain it he must go back to his grandparents and the year 1922.
Lefty and Desdemona Stephanides are brother and sister from a mountain village in Greece. When the burning of Smyrna drives them from their home, they flee toward a ship and invent a story in which they are strangers who fall in love. The lie follows them to Detroit, where Lefty works at Ford and Desdemona clings to Greek customs.
From there the novel moves forward through Detroit's boom years and unrest, following the next generation in a family whose bar and neighbourhood shape its fortunes. Cal tells it with humour and imagination, admitting he fills in gaps. At its centre is a question: how does anyone become who they are?
This summary stops at roughly the end of the first act. Everything after that sits behind a spoiler gate.
Themes
Spoiler-freeIdentity and the self
Cal asks what makes a person a man or a woman, and how much is body, upbringing, or choice. The novel treats identity as something both inherited and made. It resists easy answers from medicine or from society.
Immigration and assimilation
The Stephanides family arrives in Detroit carrying old customs and trying to become American. Lefty takes to the new life while Desdemona clings to the old. The book shows what is gained and lost in the exchange.
Family, heredity and fate
A single gene passes silently through generations, and small chances decide who exists at all. Cal sees his life as the result of both accident and a long chain of choices. History runs through his body.
Myth and storytelling
Greek myth, from Tiresias to Hermaphroditus, frames the narrator's sense of himself. Cal admits he reconstructs scenes from fragments, so the novel is also about how stories are built. Epic and comic modes mix throughout.
Place and change in Detroit
The city's rise, racial tension and white flight form the backdrop to the family's story. Neighbourhoods and houses carry meaning, from the family bar to the modernist house that gives the book its title.
Characters
Fates hiddenCal (Callie) Stephanides
Narrator and protagonistRaised as a girl in Detroit and now a man in Berlin, Cal tells his own story and that of his family. He is funny, curious and candid about the limits of what he knows.
What happens to Cal (Callie) StephanidesHideSpoilers
What happensCal learns the truth about his body, refuses surgery and flees west, where he starts to live as a man. He returns for his father's funeral and accepts his inheritance, and by the end lives in Berlin as a man.
Lefty Stephanides
GrandfatherA gambler and silkworm farmer's brother from a Greek mountain village, he flees Smyrna with his sister and builds a new life in Detroit.
What happens to Lefty StephanidesHideSpoilers
What happensHe works at Ford and is drawn into bootlegging, then his mind declines in old age.
Desdemona Stephanides
GrandmotherLefty's sister and wife, she carries Orthodox faith, guilt and old superstitions with her to America.
What happens to Desdemona StephanidesHideSpoilers
What happensShe remains rooted in Greek customs and her faith, and lives to see the family's crisis. Her silkworms fail in Michigan.
Milton Stephanides
FatherLefty's son is a bold, ambitious man who wins Tessie at a skating rink and builds a business around the family bar.
What happens to Milton StephanidesHideSpoilers
What happensHe wants the doctors to make things normal, and he dies in a crash connected to the family crisis.
Tessie Stephanides
MotherA warm, anxious woman whose marriage to Milton settles into routine as the family prospers.
What happens to Tessie StephanidesHideSpoilers
What happensShe grieves her husband's death and must accept her child's change, welcoming Cal home.
Sourmelina
Desdemona's cousinMet aboard the ship, she later shares a Detroit household with Lefty and Desdemona.
What happens to SourmelinaHideSpoilers
What happensShe lives with the family on Hurlbut Street alongside Zizmo, and her story is bound up with his disappearance.
Jimmy Zizmo
BootleggerA man the couple meet on the ship, he later draws Lefty into bootlegging in Detroit.
What happens to Jimmy ZizmoHideSpoilers
What happensHe vanishes on a frozen lake, and his death is never explained.
The Obscure Object
Callie's schoolmate and obsessionA classmate at Baker and Inglis whom Callie adores. Their friendship deepens over summers at her family's cottage.
What happens to The Obscure ObjectHideSpoilers
What happensShe remains the focus of Callie's unnamed desire, while Callie's flight ends the friendship.
Dr. Luce
New York specialistA doctor who believes gender is shaped by upbringing and who examines Callie in New York.
What happens to Dr. LuceHideSpoilers
What happensHe recommends surgery and a life as a girl, a decision Callie rejects after reading his file.
Zora
Friend and mentor in San FranciscoA transgender woman who befriends Cal in San Francisco and teaches him that identity is partly chosen.
What happens to ZoraHideSpoilers
What happensShe remains a friend and mentor during Cal's time in San Francisco.
Plot summary
Contains spoilersMiddlesex in 8 parts, in our own words.
This section gives away the whole storyEight short summaries, one per part, including the ending. Open it only if you have finished the book or don’t mind knowing.
Show spoilersHide spoilers
Eight short summaries, one per part, including the ending. Open it only if you have finished the book or don’t mind knowing.
- Book One
Born Twice, Origins in Smyrna
Cal Stephanides, a forty-one-year-old Greek-American cultural attaché in Berlin, announces that he was born twice: as a baby girl in January 1960 and again as a teenage boy in August 1974. He explains that a rare recessive mutation, 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, left him with ambiguous genitalia that were read as female at birth. To explain it, he says, he must go back to his grandparents and the year 1922.
Lefty and Desdemona Stephanides are brother and sister from the village of Bithynios on Mount Olympus. Orphaned young, they grow close, and their feelings cross the line between family and love. Desdemona raises silkworms, while Lefty gambles in Bursa. When the Great Fire of Smyrna destroys the Greek and Armenian quarters in 1922, they flee in terror toward a ship called the Giulia.
Aboard the ship they pose as strangers who fall in love and then marry, hiding that they are siblings. Desdemona's silver spoon and her Orthodox guilt follow her. They meet Jimmy Zizmo and Desdemona's cousin Sourmelina. The union that follows is, in Cal's telling, the origin of his condition.
In Detroit they live with Sourmelina and Zizmo on Hurlbut Street. Lefty learns English, works for Ford, and steps into the Ford English School's melting pot ceremony, emerging in a suit and waving a flag. Desdemona stays rooted in old customs, and her silkworms fail to thrive in Michigan. Zizmo's bootlegging draws Lefty in, and Zizmo later vanishes on a frozen lake, a death never explained.
- Book Two
Marriage on Ice, Callie Grows Up
Book Two returns to Bithynios and its silkworms before moving to the next generation. Milton and Tessie come together through a courtship at the ice rink. Milton, bold if not graceful, wins Tessie away from a seminary student. Cal notes how the whole line leading to him hinges on small chances like who asks whom to skate, and the marriage itself grows routine and cool.
Callie grows up in the family's world of the bar, the Zebra Room, and a changing Detroit. In the chapter called Tricknology, Milton insists on staying in his neighborhood despite the Nation of Islam presence nearby and the accelerating white flight. Lefty's mind declines in the background.
As a teenager at Baker and Inglis, Callie falls hard for a classmate Cal calls the Obscure Object. Summers at the Object's family cottage, the clarinet, and sleepovers deepen the obsession. The Object's brother Jerome pursues Callie, who tolerates him as cover for her real fixation.
Then the crisis arrives. In Berlin, Cal follows news of the family trouble in Detroit while recalling Dr. Luce, the New York specialist who interviews Callie. Luce believes gender is shaped by upbringing, and Callie gives the answers she senses are expected. The book closes on Cal tracing the gene itself, from the egg onward, as the fated thread behind his life.
- Book Three
Middlesex and Callie's Secret Body
Book Three begins by tying Cal's identity to the family's genes and history, from Bithynios through Lefty and Desdemona to Milton and Tessie. In Berlin Cal lives as a man, but he narrates the years when Callie was raised as a girl. He admits he reconstructs scenes from fragments and imagination. The family has prospered, and the Zebra Room has paid for a move to Grosse Pointe.
Cal describes Milton's Super 8 home movies. They show sunny, edited scenes of family happiness, and Milton is mostly behind the camera. Watching them as an adult, Cal sees what the footage hides, including the ambiguity of his own childhood body. Then he describes the modernist house on Middlesex Boulevard, whose name seems to fit him.
At school Callie plays Tiresias in Antigone and grows ever closer to the Object, sharing beds and secrets while her desire stays unnamed. Jerome presses unwanted advances on her. Her body is not changing like her classmates': she has not menstruated, and her voice and frame seem off. Cal says his desire felt like a boy's.
The pressure mounts. After Luce recommends surgery and a life as a girl, Callie secretly reads his file and learns she is genetically male. Milton wants the doctors' answer, and Tessie senses it is wrong. Callie refuses the surgery and decides to run away.
- Book Four
Flight West and Return
Book Four finds Cal in Berlin, living alone, working for the State Department, and tentatively drawn to Julie Kikuchi, though he fears telling her the truth about his body. He insists his story must include his grandparents, whose union introduced the gene. In the past, he remembers looking himself up in a dictionary and finding the name of his condition.
Having read Luce's report, Callie rejects the surgery and leaves for the West. He travels by bus and on the road, cuts his hair, and learns to pass as a boy, feeling both fear and freedom. He misses his family but knows he cannot go back to the plan made for him.
In San Francisco he finds work in a peep show club, performing as Hermaphroditus, with Bob Presto as the owner. He befriends Zora, a transgender woman who teaches him that identity is partly chosen. Cal frames his body through the myth of Hermaphroditus, a being of both sexes, rather than the medical file.
News of Milton's crisis reaches him and pulls him home. Milton dies in a crash, and Cal returns to Detroit for the Greek Orthodox funeral, grieving and carrying some guilt. He comes back as himself to a family that knew him as Callie, and his mother Tessie must take in her husband's death and her child's change. Cal accepts his inheritance, gene and all.
- Book One
Grandparents' Voyage to Detroit
Cal opens with a bold claim: he was born a girl in 1960 and born again as a boy in 1974. The cause is a recessive mutation, 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, traced to his grandparents Lefty and Desdemona, brother and sister from Bithynios. He writes from Berlin and mentions a failed romance with Julie Kikuchi. To make sense of himself, he says, he must start in 1922.
In that year the Great Fire of Smyrna drives Lefty and Desdemona from their world. Seen through Desdemona's fear, the burning city and crowds at the harbor push them aboard the Giulia. They decide to hide that they are siblings and invent a courtship, rehearsing glances and conversation as strangers while their feelings turn into marriage.
On the ship they consummate the marriage, and Desdemona is haunted by guilt and by her spoon, which she uses to guess the sex of babies. They also meet Zizmo and Desdemona's cousin Sourmelina. Cal sees this crossing as the start of the gene's path toward him.
In Detroit, Lefty finds work at Ford and attends its English school. He climbs into the melting pot in costume and comes out an American, while Desdemona clings to Greek food, faith, and her silkworm cocoons. The family lives with Sourmelina and Zizmo, whose bootlegging draws Lefty in. Zizmo disappears on a frozen lake without explanation.
- Book Two
Courtship, Clarinets and Clinics
Book Two reaches again into the village past, then follows the family through Detroit's changes. Milton wins Tessie at the skating rink, outmaneuvering a pious seminary rival. Cal stresses how his existence depends on such chance moments. The marriage that results settles into routine while Milton throws himself into business.
Callie grows up in a city shifting around the family's bar. Milton refuses to leave his neighborhood as the Nation of Islam gains ground near it, a stubbornness that is both loyal and blind. Lefty weakens with age. Meanwhile Callie's body quietly diverges from her friends', though no one around her can say why.
At school she becomes obsessed with the Obscure Object, spending summers at the lake cottage and sharing a room with her. Jerome, the Object's brother, courts Callie, who uses his attention as cover. The clarinet and the long summer give the friendship its charge, and Callie cannot name what she feels.
Later, Luce examines Callie in New York and she performs femininity for him. In Berlin, Cal follows news of the family trouble through a television program. The book closes with Cal explaining how a single gene, carried silently, produced his body.
- Book Three
A House Called Middlesex
Book Three starts with Cal taking stock. The gene passes unseen from Lefty and Desdemona through Milton and Tessie, and he admits he builds the story from scraps and invention. He now lives as a man in Berlin. His family moved to a prosperous Grosse Pointe after the Zebra Room did well, and the story turns to his birth and childhood.
The family's home movies fill several chapters. Milton films a curated, sunny version of life, and Cal reads silence, glances, and an old bathing-suit scene differently as an adult. The house on Middlesex Boulevard, with its odd glass design, mirrors his in-between condition.
At Baker and Inglis, Callie plays Tiresias in Antigone, and her closeness to the Object grows through sleepovers. Jerome grows aggressive. Callie senses her desire is not a girl's and cannot say why. She has not menstruated, and the signs of difference accumulate.
The crisis follows. Luce, working from the idea that upbringing decides gender, recommends surgery and life as a girl. Milton wants whatever will make things normal, and Tessie grieves. Callie reads the doctor's file, learns what she is, and chooses to flee rather than be changed.
- Book Four
Hermaphroditus and the Last Stop
Book Four returns to Cal in Berlin, a man alone in a city of construction cranes. He and Julie Kikuchi move carefully, and he fears that telling her will make him a curiosity. He insists that his own body's story is also his grandparents' story. Memory and myth, including Tiresias, frame his idea that his dual life is a vantage point.
The past catches up in the stolen report and the dictionary entry that names his condition. Cal sees how medicine described him and how his parents trusted it. Rather than accept surgery, Callie takes to the road, hitchhiking and riding buses west. Along the way Cal starts to live as a man, learning how to look and speak.
In San Francisco he lands in a peep show, calling himself Hermaphroditus. Zora becomes a friend and mentor, and Bob Presto pays him while profiting from the spectacle. The work is degrading yet gives him income and a kind of control, and he reaches for the myth of Hermaphroditus as a gentler account of his body than any chart.
Word from home brings him back. Milton dies in a crash connected to the family's crisis, and Cal grieves and feels responsible. He returns to Detroit for the funeral beside Tessie, and he carries the gene forward as the one thread linking him to his forebears.
Who it’s for
- Readers of multigenerational family sagas
- Fans of literary fiction with a strong narrative voice
- Anyone curious about Greek-American and Detroit history
- Readers interested in gender, identity and myth
Content notes
- Incest between siblings
- Intersex themes and non-consensual medical examination
- Sexual content, including teenage experience
- Racial violence and unrest
- Death in a crash
- Peep show work and degrading treatment
Suggested age: 16+
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The full version contains spoilers, including the ending.
FAQ
What is Middlesex about?
Middlesex is narrated by Cal Stephanides, who was raised as a girl and later lived as a man. He traces the family history from Greece in 1922 to Detroit and beyond, explaining how a rare gene shaped his body. It is both an immigrant saga and a coming-of-age story.
Who is the narrator of Middlesex?
Cal Stephanides, a Greek-American man in Berlin, narrates the story. He tells it looking back at his childhood as Callie, and he admits he reconstructs scenes from fragments and imagination.
Is Middlesex based on a true story?
No, it is a work of fiction. Eugenides drew on his Greek-American background and on Detroit, but Cal is an invented character, and the author has said the book is not autobiographical.
What does the title Middlesex mean?
It is the name of the Detroit-area street where the family's modernist house stands. It also suggests being between sexes, and fits Cal's in-between condition.
What condition does Cal have?
Cal has 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, a rare recessive mutation that left him with ambiguous genitalia. At birth he was taken to be a girl and raised as one. The gene came down through his grandparents.
Did Middlesex win any awards?
Yes, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2003. It was also a major bestseller and a pick for Oprah's Book Club.
Is Middlesex hard to read?
The prose is lively and funny, but the book is long and moves between eras and perspectives. Some readers find the early Smyrna and Detroit sections slow before Callie's story takes over.
Do Lefty and Desdemona really marry as siblings? Spoilers
This answer explains how the book ends.Show spoilersHide spoilers
Yes. They hide that they are brother and sister, invent a courtship on the ship to America and marry. Cal sees their union as the origin of the gene that shaped his body.
Why does Callie run away? Spoilers
This answer explains how the book ends.Show spoilersHide spoilers
After Dr. Luce recommends surgery and a life as a girl, Callie secretly reads his file and learns she is genetically male. She refuses the operation and flees west rather than be changed.
How does Middlesex end? Spoilers
This answer explains how the book ends.Show spoilersHide spoilers
Milton dies in a crash connected to the family crisis, and Cal returns to Detroit for the funeral. He comes back as himself to a family that knew him as Callie, and Tessie must accept both her husband's death and her child's change. Cal accepts his inheritance, gene and all.
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