The Blue Flowers, also known as Between Blue and Blue, (original French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 title: Les fleurs bleues) is a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 novel written by Raymond Queneau

Raymond Queneau

Raymond Queneau was a French poet and novelist and the co-founder of Ouvroir de littérature potentielle .-Biography:Born in Le Havre, Seine-Maritime, Queneau was the only child of Auguste Queneau and Joséphine Mignot...

 in 1965.

The English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 translation is by Barbara Wright

Barbara Wright

Barbara Wright was an English translator of modern French literature.Wright, born in Worthing, studied music and art in Paris in the years before World War II...

, who also translated Queneau's Zazie in the Metro

Zazie in the Metro

Zazie in the Metro — or simply Zazie, depending on the translation — a French novel written in 1959, was the first major success of author Raymond Queneau...

. The Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 translation was by Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy , the Cosmicomics collection of short stories , and the novels Invisible Cities and If on a winter's night a traveler .Lionised in Britain and the United States,...

.

Plot introduction

The Duke of Auge dreams that he is Cidrolin, living on a barge alone with his daughter, while Cidrolin dreams that he is the Duke of Auge, travelling through the history of France. They will meet in 1964. Carl Reinecke, a critic writing for the London Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

, has argued that this novel is an example of the archetypal "prodigal son" storyline.