Calliope Stephanides is not like other girls. She has inherited a rare genetic mutation - the biological trace of a guilty secret that has followed her grandparents from the crumbling Ottoman Empire to Detroit suburbia. Thanks the gene, Callie is part girl, part boy. And even though the gene's epic travels have ended, her own odyssey has only begun.
Sprawling across eight decades - and one unusually awkward adolescence - 'Middlesex' is a grand, utterly original fable on the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire.