The Blue Flower
About this audiobook
The Blue Flower 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 "heart's heart," his "spirit's guide"—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?
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.
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About the author
Penelope Fitzgerald (1916–2000) was an English novelist, poet, essayist, and biographer who embarked on her literary career at the age of fifty-eight and later earned much popular and critical acclaim, winning a Booker Prize and a National Book Critics Circle Award.
Candia McWilliam was born in Edinburgh. She is the author of A Case of Knives, which won a Betty Trask Prize, A Little Stranger, Debatable Land, which was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize and its Italian translation the Premio Grinzane Cavour for the best foreign novel of the year, and a collection of stories Wait Till I Tell You.
Derek Perkins is a professional narrator and voice actor. He has earned numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration, as well as numerous Society of Voice Arts nominations. AudioFile magazine named him a Best Voice consecutively in 2014, 2015, and 2016. Augmented by a knowledge of three foreign languages and a facility with accents, he has narrated numerous titles in a wide range of fiction and nonfiction genres.
