Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| The Virgin Suicides | 1993 |
| Middlesex | 2002 |
| The Marriage Plot | 2011 |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
| Fresh Complaint | 2017 |
About Jeffrey Eugenides
Jeffrey Eugenides is an American novelist and short story writer, born in Detroit, Michigan, on 8 March 1960. He has published three novels, “The Virgin Suicides” (1993), “Middlesex” (2002) and “The Marriage Plot” (2011), and the story collection “Fresh Complaint” (2017). “Middlesex” won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2003.
Eugenides is of Greek descent on his father’s side and of English and Irish descent on his mother’s. He attended University Liggett School in Grosse Pointe and then Brown University, graduating in 1982 after a year off travelling in Europe, during which he volunteered with Mother Teresa in Calcutta. He took an MA in English and creative writing at Stanford University in 1986, and later worked in New York as a secretary at the Academy of American Poets.
“The Virgin Suicides” is set in Grosse Pointe and follows the deaths by suicide of five sisters over the course of a year, as told by the neighbourhood boys who watch them. Sofia Coppola directed the 1999 film adaptation. His 1996 short story “Baster” became the basis for the 2010 romantic comedy “The Switch”.
“Middlesex” follows Calliope Stephanides, later Cal, an intersex person raised as a girl, and takes in the Greek American immigrant experience and the rise and fall of Detroit. As well as winning the Pulitzer, it was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. Eugenides lived in Berlin from 1999 to 2004.
“The Marriage Plot” appeared nine years later. It follows three young adults caught in a love triangle as they graduate from Brown University, and was also a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. “Fresh Complaint” gathers ten short stories, eight of which had first appeared in magazines and journals. Eugenides joined the creative writing faculty at Princeton University in 2007 and moved to New York University in 2018 as the Lewis and Loretta Glucksman Professor in American Letters. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters the same year.
Photo: Rodrigo Fernández, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).