Jeffrey Eugenides

Jeffrey Eugenides (2011)

Jeffrey Kent Eugenides [ ˈdʒɛfɹɪ juˈdʒinɪdəs ] (born March  8, 1960 in Detroit , Michigan ) is an American writer.

Live and act

Eugenides was born in Grosse Pointe , one of the wealthiest cities in the United States and a suburb of Detroit. His mother, Wanda, comes from an Anglo-Irish family, and his father was a mortgage banker whose parents immigrated from Greece, an experience that Eugenides incorporated into his novel Middlesex . He is the youngest of three sons.

Eugenides attended the prestigious University Liggett School in Grosse Pointe and then studied English and creative writing at Brown University (the central setting of his novel The Marriage Plot ). He earned a bachelor's degree there in 1983 (magna cum laude), followed by a master's degree at Stanford University in 1986 .

His first novel The Virgin Suicides (German The Suicide Sisters ) was filmed in 1999 by Sofia Coppola . His novel Middlesex , published in 2002, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 . In 2015, this novel was chosen by the BBC's selection of the best 20 novels from 2000 to 2014 as one of the most important works of this century to date. In 2005 he published a book of short stories called Air Mail . His third novel was published in October 2011: The Marriage Plot is a love triangle set in the setting of an American elite university . The literature student Madeleine is being courted by two fellow students: the manic-depressive Leonhard and the student Mitchell, who resembles the author in his biographical description. In addition to the love story, Eugenides has his characters discussed by Roland Barthes , among others, against the background of literary criticism .

From 1999 to 2004 Eugenides lived with his family as a guest of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in Berlin . He lives with his wife and daughter in Princeton, New Jersey , where he holds a professorship in creative writing at Princeton University .

Awards

• 2003 Pulitzer Prize for the novel Middlesex
• 2003 WELT Literature Prize
• Berlin Prize Fellow Class of Spring 2001 of the American Academy in Berlin
• 2013 member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 2018 member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters

Works

• The Virgin Suicides . Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 1993, ISBN 0-374-28438-5 .
  • The suicide sisters . From the American by Mechthild Sandberg-Ciletti and Eike Schönfeld . Byblos, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-929029-12-X . New edition: Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-498-01671-7 .
• Air Mail: Stories . From the American by Cornelia C. Walter and Eike Schönfeld. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-499-23605-2 .
• Middlesex . Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 2002, ISBN 0-374-19969-8 .
  • Middlesex . From the American by Cornelia C. Walter and Eike Schönfeld. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-498-01670-9 .
• My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead . Anthology. Harper, New York 2008, ISBN 978-0-06-124037-9 .
  • My mistress' sparrow is dead: great love stories in world literature . Anthology. Editor Jeffrey Eugenides. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-499-25222-8 .
• The marriage plot . Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 2011, ISBN 978-0-374-20305-4 .
  • The act of love . Novel. From the American by Uli Aumüller and Grete Osterwald. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-498-01674-6 .
• Fresh Complaint: Stories . Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 2017, ISBN 978-0-374-20306-1 .

Filmography

• 1999: The Virgin Suicides , directed by Sofia Coppola

Web links

• Literature by and about Jeffrey Eugenides in the catalog of the German National Library
• Bibliography of all titles at Rowohlt.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Felicitas von Lovenberg : An Ovid in Exile from Princeton . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Pictures and Times, October 15, 2011)
2. ↑ Interview with Johanna Adorján , I believe in tonal literature in Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung on October 16, 2011, page 29
3. ↑ DAAD website