Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Blue Flower
    The Blue Flower
    The Blue Flower
    Audiobook6 hours

    The Blue Flower

    Written by Penelope Fitzgerald and Candia McWilliam

    Narrated by Thomas Judd and Stephanie Racine

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    From the Booker Prize-winning author of ‘Offshore’ comes this unusual romance between the poet Novalis and his fiancée Sophie, newly introduced by Candia McWilliam.

    The year is 1794 and Fritz, passionate, idealistic and brilliant, is seeking his father’s permission to announce his engagement to his heart’s desire: twelve-year-old Sophie. His astounded family and friends are amused and disturbed by his betrothal. What can he be thinking?

    Tracing the dramatic early years of the young German who was to become the great romantic poet and philosopher Novalis, ‘The Blue Flower’ is a masterpiece of invention, evoking the past with a reality that we can almost feel.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateDec 15, 2016
    ISBN9780008235598
    Author

    Penelope Fitzgerald

    PENELOPE FITZGERALD wrote many books small in size but enormous in popular and critical acclaim over the past two decades. Over 300,000 copies of her novels are in print, and profiles of her life appeared in both The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. In 1979, her novel Offshore won Britain's Booker Prize, and in 1998 she won the National Book Critics Circle Prize for The Blue Flower. Though Fitzgerald embarked on her literary career when she was in her 60's, her career was praised as "the best argument ... for a publishing debut made late in life" (New York Times Book Review). She told the New York Times Magazine, "In all that time, I could have written books and I didn’t. I think you can write at any time of your life." Dinitia Smith, in her New York Times Obituary of May 3, 2000, quoted Penelope Fitzgerald from 1998 as saying, "I have remained true to my deepest convictions, I mean to the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong, and the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities, which I have done my best to treat as comedy, for otherwise how can we manage to bear it?"

    Related to The Blue Flower

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      A Year in Reading: C Pam Zhang

      Dec 11, 2019

      It was the last year of my third decade on this earth, and it seems with every passing year I grow increasingly alien to that earth, or it to me. The post A Year in Reading: C Pam Zhang appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Lust, Loss, and Liberation in Jenny Erpenbeck’s ‘Kairos’

      Jun 1, 2023

      Maybe this novel is a Bildungsroman about freedom, with young Katharina its hero and the West her inevitable liberation? The post Lust, Loss, and Liberation in Jenny Erpenbeck’s ‘Kairos’ appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Olga Tokarczuk Takes on the Detective Novel

      Aug 21, 2019

      In her hands, the whodunit becomes a Trojan horse to explore a whole host of concerns, including fate and how one life fits into the world around it. The post Olga Tokarczuk Takes on the Detective Novel appeared first on The Millions.

      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Writing Back to Guy and Harriet Pringle

      May 11, 2018

      I met Guy and Harriet Pringle in the winter of 1987. In those days, Turkish public television had a rather ingenious arrangement with public radio; they would show the dubbed series, and the radio would play the original soundtrack. I do not remember

      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Writing, Always Writing: On Charles Baxter, Craft, and Aging

      Sep 14, 2020

      The sort of realism that I’ve practiced in the past isn’t adequate to the times we’re in. The post Writing, Always Writing: On Charles Baxter, Craft, and Aging appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Sense of Sensibility: On ‘The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick’

      Oct 19, 2017

      In Hardwick’s criticism, we encounter an uncondescending intelligence, a humane sensibility, and a forthright independence of mind for which we, in our scatterbrained era, cannot be grateful enough. The post A Sense of Sensibility: On ‘The Coll

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Maggie Shipstead Interview: ‘I Went To The Arctic Five Times While Writing Great Circle’

      May 26, 2021

      American novelist Maggie Shipstead spent seven years researching her third work of fiction, Great Circle. The result is an almost 600-page epic, about a woman who attempts to fly around the globe in 1949, and the Hollywood actress who plays her in 20

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Turn It Down: Morton Feldman's Silent Revolution

      Sep 4, 2017

      If you've never heard For Bunita Marcus, pianist Marc-André Hamelin predicts it'll be either the most aggravating thing you've ever heard, or the best migraine medicine you've ever had.

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Most Anticipated: The Great Second-Half 2021 Book Preview

      Jul 15, 2021

      We've just an entered an amazing six-month stretch for book-lovers. The post Most Anticipated: The Great Second-Half 2021 Book Preview appeared first on The Millions.

      47 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Olga Tokarczuk Explores the Live Chain That Connects and Fetters Us in ‘Flights’

      Aug 9, 2018

      In a section of Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk’s Man Booker International Prize-winning novel Flights, translated by Jennifer Croft, the wife and toddler of a man named Kunicki disappear while they are on vacation on a tiny island. After a long day spe

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Millions Top Ten: July 2019

      Aug 8, 2019

      Benjamin Dreyer graduates to our Hall of Fame, making room for new Colson Whitehead, while Sally Rooney pulls off the extremely rare double listing. The post The Millions Top Ten: July 2019 appeared first on The Millions.

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Eight Hot Trollopes

      Jun 17, 2019

      An experiment for 21st-century readers: let’s take a quick tour of the love scenes of a famous Victorian novelist to see if his writings still enflame. The post Eight Hot Trollopes appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      How We Made An Angel At My Table

      Oct 11, 2020

      Jane Campion read To the Is-land in 1982 while a film student in Sydney. Her mother, Edith, sent her a copy. She’d loved Frame’s books since reading Owls Do Cry as a teenager. She cried. She had an idea. Back in New Zealand for Christmas, she asked h

      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Year in Reading: Paul Yoon

      Dec 8, 2017

      This year I read too many wonderful books to name all of them here, but some highlights were: Katie Kitamura’s intoxicating A Separation, which is such a wild and yet disciplined exploration of the idea of the traveler and of grief. Anuk Arudpragasam

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Art of Fiction No. 254

      Jun 14, 2022

      The Art of Fiction No. 254
      33 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Blue Flower

    4/5

    10 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      I will turn to the written work. This is a terribly plodding reading - everyone sounds moronic. The reader should not have been chosen for a title that requires a finely tuned ear for and more than a cursory understanding of German. The word „beliebt“ in a phrase meaning „if you please“ was pronounced „beleibt“, which signifies „stout“ or „paunchy“. Ouch!

      1 person found this helpful