Middlesex
Cal Stephanides, born intersex to a Greek-American family in Detroit, narrates three generations of genetic and cultural inheritance. Eugenides published it in 2002 and won the Pulitzer. The novel treats identity as biological fact and social construction simultaneously, without choosing sides. Its command of multigenerational scope recalls Garcia Marquez.
Eugenides spends two thirds of the novel on grandparents and Detroit before Cal's own life gets room, then hurries the story the title promised. The narrator's omniscient access to scenes decades before his birth is a stunt that goes unexamined, and the intersex condition functions mostly as a plot engine; adult Cal, narrating from Berlin, stays oddly out of focus.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
