The Black Tulip

In Haarlem, Netherlands, a prize of ƒ100,000 lures the nation’s finest gardeners to cultivate a genuine black tulip, igniting a competition for money, honor, and renown. Only the city’s oldest citizens remember Tulip Mania from thirty years before, yet the populace plunges into the rivalry with zeal. The young, bourgeois Cornelius van Baerle appears poised to claim victory, until fate lands him in Loevestein prison. There he meets Rosa, the prison guard’s beautiful daughter, whose companionship offers him solace and aid, and who will ultimately become his rescuer.