Elizabeth Kostova
The Swan Thieves

Asheville author Elizabeth Kostova hit it big (make that huge) with her first novel, The Historian a few years back. The book garnered international acclaim and quickly became a #1 best-selling hit, the fastest ever for a debut novel in the United States. Inspired by the tales of Dracula her father recounted to her when she was a child, she worked on the book for nearly ten years. In the end, it earned her a multimillion dollar advance and a legion of fans who anxiously awaited her second novel. They were rewarded last year with the release of The Swan Thieves, a richly woven tapestry about art and those who create it. It is also, says Elizabeth, a story of “the obsessions we have with other people and with art, and how the two sometimes go hand-in- hand.” The book is now available in softcover.

Library Journal, in its review of The Swan Thieves, says, “The luxurious artistic detail and richly drawn characters will pull in readers who will be hard-pressed to stop turning pages ...”

The Swan Thieves begins with an act of vandalism committed by the well-known painter Robert Oliver when he slashes a canvas in the National Gallery of Art. This sends his psychiatrist on a journey of discovery (a journey that takes him to North Carolina) that entangles him in the loves, betrayals, and artistic obsession of his patient.

Elizabeth says she’d long wanted to write a novel about a painter. “I am fascinated by the act of painting and by the fact that there are people who spend their lives engaged in putting color on a canvas ...” About the process of writing the novel, she says, “...it’s such an intimate look at the lives of these characters and they seemed very real to me while I was writing them. I’m sure I talked aloud to myself in a lot of public situations during that time!”

The author has lived in Asheville off and on over the years, but regularly since June 2009. “I grew up visiting grandparents and other relatives here (and) attended Warren Wilson College from 1982–83, and lived here again in 1989 and for four years in the early 90s.

“My mother’s family has been here since about 1879,” Elizabeth told The Laurel. “It really feels like home and I hope never to leave again.

“I can’t seem to stay away from the mountains. Whenever I was living elsewhere and drove back here to visit, I had a sense of relief as soon as that first mountain cam into view over the horizon. The natural world here—and the world, for me, of family and old friends—is a wonderful place to live and write.”

The Swan Thieves, fiction, softcover, $15.99, published by Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and Company, is available through bookstores nationwide.