The Blue Flower: A Novel

&quot;An astonishing book . . . Fitzgerald's greatest triumph.&quot; - <i>New York Times Book Review</i><br><br> <i>The Blue Flower</i> is set in the age of Goethe, in the small towns and great universities of late eighteenth-century Germany. 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. Fritz seeks his father's permission to wed his &quot;heart's heart,&quot; his &quot;spirit's guide&quot; - a plain, simple child named Sophie von Kühn. It is an attachment that shocks his family and friends. Their brilliant young Fritz, betrothed to a twelve-year-old dullard? How can this be?<br><br> The irrationality of love, the transfiguration of the commonplace, the clarity of purpose that comes with knowing one's own fate - these are the themes of this beguiling novel, themes treated with a mix of wit, grace, and mischievous humor unique to the art of Penelope Fitzgerald.<br><br> &quot;An extraordinary imagining . . . an original masterpiece.&quot; - Hermione Lee,<i> Financial Times</i>