Passion, infidelity, social climbing, cross-dressing, and one very special white rose weave a seductive narrative in this intelligent and tender novel.

At forty-eight, Marian Kahn, a professor of history at Columbia, has reached a comfortable perch. Married, wealthy, and the famed discoverer of that eighteenth-century adventuress, Lady Charlotte Wilcox, she ought to be content. Instead, she is horrified to find herself profoundly in love with Oliver, the son of her oldest friend. When Marian's cousin, the snobbish Barton, announces his engagement to Sophie, a graduate student in Marian's department, Marian, Oliver, and Sophie find themselves in an awkward triangle. As a risky charade brings their affairs to a climax, all three of them learn that love is seldom straightforward, but always a gift.

From the West Village to the Upper East Side, from the Hamptons to Millbrook, The White Rose is at once a nuanced and affectionate reimagining of Strauss' beloved opera, Der Rosenkavalier, and a mesmerizing novel of our own time and place.

"Korelitz, known for her intelligent thrillers (The Sabbathday River, etc.), strikes off in a new direction with this mordant story of aging, love and self-discovery, a reimagining of the Strauss opera Der Rosenkavalier set in upper-class Jewish New York City. Marian Kahn, gracefully aging at 48, is a respected history professor at Columbia, author of a bestselling book of popular history and solidly ensconced in a satisfactory if not brilliant marriage when suddenly she's swept away by the wild but dangerous joy of an affair with the son of her oldest friend. Twenty-six-year-old Oliver, owner of a flower shop called the White Rose, is truly in love, but when he meets graduate student and heiress Sophie Klein, the fiance of Marian's pompous cousin, Barton Ochstein, he's blindsided and must question his still strong love for Marian. Sophie is swept away, too, by the knowledge that she may want something more out of life than the academic satisfaction she derives from the study of her own White Rose, a group of German dissidents who agitated against the Nazis. The belief that love always involves sacrifice and is worth the sacrifice it demands drives this warm, worldly novel. Even when their own comfort is at stake, Korelitz's characters succumb to generous impulses, making this a satisfying, emotionally rich read." Publishers Weekly (Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Korelitz...persuasively conveys the depth of her paramours' emotions and perceptively gauges their motivations in an insightful, sensitive, and poignant romance." Booklist

"A deftly plotted narrative...elegant and melancholy yet surprisingly optimistic, warmed by full-bodied characterizations and expert delineations of complex emotions." Kirkus Reviews

"This is a great love story — tender, sophisticated, perverse, drenched in feeling." Edmund White

"The White Rose is a delight. A novel of manners and love, it is droll, sexy, and very clever." Scott Turow

"A deeply satisfying read, the kind we have missed and longed for...every sentence sparkles and every dilemma entertains." Elinor Lipman

"...[T]his work is a heady bloom, ripe with unlikely yet rewarding elements of romance." Library Journal

"Neat and intricate without extravagance, The White Rose is a rare modern novel which both obeys and upsets novelistic conventions, and the result is as enjoyable as it is technically excellent." Providence Journal

Jean Hanff Korelitz lives in Princeton, NJ, with her husband, the Irish poet Paul Muldoon, and their children. She is the author of the novels The Sabbathday River and A Jury of Her Peers, as well as Interference Powder, a novel for children.