Jeffrey Eugenides

In anticipation of Baz Lurhmann’s “The Great Gatsby” opening in theaters this weekend, novelists Chang-Rae Lee, Jeffrey Eugenides and Nell Freudenberger discuss the novel's influence ...

Jeffrey Eugenides talks about his literary influences, the city of Detroit, and why he's grown to hate the word "sucks."

 

Middlesex  won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it’s the Leonard Lopate Show Book Club’s selection for July! It tells the story of Calliope Stephanides and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus to Detroit, then to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe. Calliope is not like other girls—she has to uncover a family secret and piece together her genetic history in order to reveal who she truly is. Jeffrey Eugenides joins us to discuss the novel.

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Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jeffrey Eugenides discusses his latest, The Marriage Plot, a tale of modern love. It follows Madeleine, Leonard, and Mitchell, who meet at Brown University, where Madeleine immerses herself in works by Jane Austen and George Eliot, examining the marriage plot at the heart of the great English novels. The story follows the three college graduates as they embark on the world, searching for where they belong—and who they belong with.

Novelist Jeffrey Eugenides spoke about his new novel, The Marriage Plot. Find out what he's been reading and listening to lately.

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jeffrey Eugenides discusses his latest, The Marriage Plot, a tale of modern love. It follows Madeleine, Leonard, and Mitchell, who meet at Brown University, where Madeleine immerses herself in works by Jane Austen and George Eliot, examining the marriage plot at the heart of the great English novels. The story follows the three college graduates as they embark on the world, searching for where they belong—and who they belong with.

A new novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Eugenides follows three college students graduating in the midst of an economic downturn. With unemployment around 10 percent, the characters try to find ways to cope — moving home, busing tables, applying to graduate school. One flees the country entirely, running from the recession at home to volunteer in India. It sounds like a novel set in 2011, until Eugenides' characters start calling each other from land line phones and writing letters home from abroad. 

Author Jeffrey Eugenides was born and raised in Detroit and the city often becomes a central character in his writings. (He lives in Princeton, New Jersey, these days.) He’s based both of his novels, Pulitzer Prize-winning "Middlesex," and "The Virgin Suicides," in the Motor City. He says as a native Detroiter it's still easy for him to love his home town: more so, perhaps, than the average outsider.

 

Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides author Jeffrey Eugenides has edited a new collection of love stories, My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro. He says the book is "a cure for lovesickness and an antidote to adultery."

Weigh in: What’s your favorite love story?

We talk to big fish in small ponds - this year's Mrs. Asparagus; a supermarket check-out celebrity; one of the inventors of books-on-tape; and, last but not least, the winner of this week's "Five Sounds in Search of an Author" contest.

What's the Next Big Thing? ...