Their brilliant young Fritz, betrothed to a twelve-year-old dullard? How can this be?

It is an attachment that shocks his family and friends. Fritz seeks his father’s permission to wed his “heart's heart,” his “spirit's guide”-a plain, simple child named Sophie von Kühn. It tells the true story of Friedrich von Hardenberg, a passionate, impetuous student of philosophy who will later gain fame as the Romantic poet Novalis. The Blue Flower is set in the age of Goethe, in the small towns and great universities of late eighteenth-century Germany. Fitzgerald’s greatest triumph.” - New York Times Book Review ”'Detail, expertly dabbed in, provides a substantial background for the story of a poet which, it is subtly suggested, is also the story of a remarkable moment in the history of civilisation… It is hard to see how the hopes and defeats of Romanticism, or the relation between inspiration and common life, between genius and mere worthiness, could be more deftly rendered than they are in this remarkable novel.“An astonishing book. In a bare little book she reveals a country and an age as lost as Tolstoy’s Russia and which we seem somehow always to have known.” - Jane Gardam, Spectator

She knows the damp smell of decay of the ancient schlosses.

She knows how they all walked, eased their old joints. ”'Her sense of time and place is marvellously deft, done in a few words. This novel is a jewel.” - Carmen Callil, Daily Telegraph The writing is ellipitical and witty… so that what could be a sad little love story is constantly funny and always absorbing. ”'An enchanting novel about heart, body and mind. ”'Wise and ironic, funny and humane, Fitzgerald is a wonderful, wonderful writer.” - David Nicholls Then, after a mile or so, someone throws the steering-wheel out of the window.” - Sebastian Faulks Everything is of top quality - the engine, the coachwork and the interior all fill you with confidence. ”'Reading a Penelope Fitzgerald novel is like being taken for a ride in a peculiar kind of car. It's also Fitzgerald at her best - elegant, inventive, hilarious, unsparing. ”'The Blue Flower is a model of what historical fiction can be at its best - when the radical otherness of other times is not merely acknowledged but made integral to the fictional experience.

The blue flower book