Middlesex
by Jeffrey Eugenides
I enjoyed this a lot. It's a combination of a lot of things that interest me---family history (and family secrets), immigration and immigrants, race, class, and of course a really good treatment of gender and intersex issues.
As far as the latter goes, I was really fascinated by the point where Cal makes his decision. (And I have no idea what name or pronoun to use, considering this is a fictional character who kind of exists at all points in the story simultaneously, so I'm going to go with the one I'd use for a person I'm talking to.) The immediate reason was discovering he was XY and his attraction to girls, of course---but I think he gets enough experience to grow out of that essentialist thinking (in my head) by the time he returns home. And he still longs for a female puberty, at least a little. Probably the best answer is that he's a true neither/both/genderqueer. He's by far the most genderqueer character I've read about, and I love reading about the ambiguity in the hands of an expert at ambiguity (i.e. a good fiction writer). Hear that, writers of the world? I demand more!
I'm really not sure how the Mosque bit fit in at all---I need to think about that more. I'm not complaining since it was completely fascinating.
My biggest complaint is that the pacing is rather uneven---the beginning is very slow and it picks up speed to an almost absurd degree at the end---but I can't decide how much of a defect this is.