Evening Class (novel) an undisclosed sum, when her publisher contacted the producers of the movie, Lars von Trier's company Zentropa. Although the film's writer-director Lone Scherfig had told the press that the film was based on her idea, executive producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen later admitted that she had made him aware of the similarities but that he had simply decided not to pay the original author. Evening Class (novel) Evening Class is a novel by Maeve Binchy. It was adapted as the award-winning film "Italian for Beginners" (2000) by writer-director Lone Scherfig, who failed to formally acknowledge the source, although at the very
Middlesex (novel) of Texas at Arlington, wrote that the novel was "the latest in a long line of contenders for the status of Great American Novel", and compared Cal to Huckleberry Finn, the narrator of "Invisible Man", and J. Sutter in "John Henry Days". Alexander Linklater of the "Evening Standard" commented that American publishers chose "Middlesex" as the next Great American Novel to generate progress for American fiction and that Eugenides is considered the "next stepping stone along from Jonathan Franzen". Dan Cryer of "Newsday" wrote that with the publication of "Middlesex", "[f]inally, Detroit has its very own great American novel". David