Literature
Jeffrey Eugenides
born 1960 · novelist, short-story writer
Detroit-born, Grosse Pointe-raised novelist whose The Virgin Suicides and Pulitzer-winning Middlesex are among the best-known literary portraits of the city and its suburbs.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan
age 66- Birth name
- Jeffrey Kent Eugenides
- Detroit years
- 1960–late 1970s
- Field
- Literature
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Eugenides was born in Detroit to a father of Greek descent and a mother of Anglo-Irish stock, and grew up in the city and in Grosse Pointe. He attended the private University Liggett School before leaving for Brown University. He has spoken of a 'perverse love' for his hometown, seeing in it the story of modern America, from the assembly line to racism, Motown, the MC5 and techno, and of being haunted by its decline. His first novel, The Virgin Suicides (1993), set in 1970s Grosse Pointe, became Sofia Coppola's 1999 film. Middlesex (2002), narrated by an intersex Greek American, traces a family from Asia Minor to Prohibition-era and postwar Detroit, the 1967 uprising and the suburbs, and won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Highlights
- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2003) for Middlesex, largely set in Detroit
- The Virgin Suicides (1993), set in Grosse Pointe, filmed by Sofia Coppola in 1999
- The Marriage Plot (2011) and the story collection Fresh Complaint (2017)
- Graduate of University Liggett School in Grosse Pointe Woods
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · 1970s
University Liggett School
The private school he attended before Brown; he credits his high school years with shaping his fiction.