Another beautifully written and well researched novel. A psychiatrist tries to solve the mystery behind a successful artist , seemingly, having a moment of madness and attacking a painting in a national art gallery. An engrossing read.
Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe has a perfectly ordered life - solitary, perhaps, but full of devotion to his profession and the painting hobby he loves. This order is destroyed when renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient. Desperate to understand the secret that torments this genius, Marlowe embarks on a journey that leads him into the lives of the women closest to Oliver and a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism. Kostova's masterful new novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy; from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth, from young love to last love. The Swan Thieves is a story of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve hope.
Elizabeth Kostova is the New York Times bestselling author of The Historian, which sold over three million copies, and The Swan Thieves. She graduated from Yale and holds an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she won the Hopwood Award for the Novel-in-Progress. Kostova won the 2006 Book Sense Award for Best Adult Fiction and the 2005 Quill Award for Debut Author of the Year for The Historian.
Kostova’s fascination with Bulgaria began when, traveling to the country for research just after college, the Berlin Wall fell the week she arrived. She fell in love with the man who would become her husband, but also fell in love with this “beautiful, battered, and haunted country.” After more than twenty visits, her passion for the place and its history is tangible on every page of her novel.
