Favourite hermaphrodite or transgender character

[Lucia Lanigan]

Orlando might be the first one that springs to mind, but how many people have actually read it? I can't get on with Woolf's style at all.

My vote goes to Evelyn in Angela Carter's The Passion Of New Eve. (Thinking about it, she wrote some of the most believable straight male characters I've come across too.)

[Guest]

Favourite hermaphrodite or transgender character

I would say the protagonist of Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, except I think I got quite annoyed with her/him towards the end.

[Bruno]

Favourite hermaphrodite or transgender character

[Andy C]

Favourite hermaphrodite or transgender character

I can think of a number of characters whose nomination would constitute a major spoiler.

[Wyatt Earp]

Favourite hermaphrodite or transgender character

This sort of counts, in a way.

[matt j]

Favourite hermaphrodite or transgender character

Um... besides Orlando, only one I can think of is the one from that Heinlein story where the now male time-traveller impregnates his past female self.

[Wyatt Earp]

Favourite hermaphrodite or transgender character

There's that Ursula Le Guin one, as well, about the female alien who transmigrates into a man's body. And one by Theodore "Amok Time" Sturgeon about a society where everyone's hermaphrodite and the twist is... Well, you'll have to read it.

Sci-fi seems to be the genre here.

[Janik]

Favourite hermaphrodite or transgender character

Estraven from The Left Hand of Darkness. Not really hemaphrodite or transgender, more niether most of the time, either/or occasionally. Defintely an interesting character, if only in terms of your metal attitude to the character, do you find yourself assigning a gender, and if so, which?

Sci-Fi and Le Guin are defintely good sources for this sort of thing.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Favourite hermaphrodite or transgender character

Most of Iain Banks' characters in the Culture novels have changed gender at some point (though it all happens well in the past). I'd probably pick one of them - likely the Special Circumstances officer Diziet Sma in The Use of Weapons.

[Wyatt Earp]

Favourite hermaphrodite or transgender character

Moorcock must have done a bit of this, surely, too.

[Guest]

Favourite hermaphrodite or transgender character

Teiresias, innit.

[Ginger Yellow]

Favourite hermaphrodite or transgender character

Yeah, it's got to be Estraven. If only because I can't think of any others off-hand. Still, it's a great book and Estraven is a great character.

[Guest]

Favourite hermaphrodite or transgender character

There was a Radio 4 programme in honour of Le Guin's sixtieth birthday, broadcast last week. Rather cursory, but there's still a few hours before the iPlayer term expires.

[nefertiti]

Favourite hermaphrodite or transgender character

It must be her eightieth birthday.

[Guest]

Favourite hermaphrodite or transgender character

Indeedy; it was the cryptic title that confused me so.