Love, art and insanity are constant threads woven through this sumptuous saga from Elizabeth Kostova, author of The Historian.
The Swan Thieves centres on psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe, whose solitary, ordered life is shattered when he takes on a new patient. Robert Oliver is a renowned artist who, after slashing a painting in Washington's National Gallery of Art, is committed to a mental institution for treatment.
For Marlowe, a passionate amateur painter, Oliver's case is all-consuming. Desperate to get inside the mind of the tormented genius, his quest crosses countries and centuries, leading to the women in Oliver's life ... and to a tragedy at the very heart of French Impressionism.