Penelope Fitzgerald’s final masterpiece. One of the ten books – novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography – that make up our Matchbook Classics’ series, a stunningly redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist.

‘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. It's also Fitzgerald at her best – elegant, inventive, hilarious, unsparing. I adore this book.’ Jonathan Franzen ‘Reading a Penelope Fitzgerald novel is like being taken for a ride in a peculiar kind of car. Everything is of top quality – the engine, the coachwork and the interior all fill you with confidence. Then, after a mile or so, someone throws the steering-wheel out of the window.’ Sebastian Faulks ‘Wise and ironic, funny and humane, Fitzgerald is a wonderful, wonderful writer.’ David Nicholls ‘An enchanting novel about heart, body and mind. The writing is ellipitical and witty… so that what could be a sad little love story is constantly funny and always absorbing. This novel is a jewel.’ Carmen Callil, Daily Telegraph ‘Her sense of time and place is marvellously deft, done in a few words. She knows how they all walked, eased their old joints. She knows the damp smell of decay of the ancient schlosses. 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 ‘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.’ Frank Kermode, LRB

• Penelope Fitzgerald is one of the most acclaimed British novelists of the twentieth century. She was awarded the Booker Prize in 1979, and shortlisted another three times. Her fans include David Nicholls, Jonathan Franzen, A S Byatt and Sebastian Faulks. • Part of the Matchbook Classics series: ten modern classics from the 4th Estate list – some of the greatest fiction and non-fiction of the last 30 years. • Stunningly packaged in an innovative and unusual format – with a back flap that folds around and tucks in under the front cover, rather like a matchbook.