The art critic and writer Sukhanov visits his mother, who has acquired a canary, and later, in a street near her apartment, an encounter with a flock of pigeons triggers a dream memory for him of his father showing him metal birds wings designed so that a man could fly using them.

Unsettled by this, Sukhanov returns home to supper with his family and discovers that his wife has replaced the painting lent to his father in law's exhibition with an early painting by his old friend Belkin depicting Leda and the swan. Unable to sleep, Sukhanov returns to the paining in the night and it seems to him his wife has become Leda in the portrait...

Olga Grushin was born in Moscow in 1971 and spent her childhood in Moscow and Prague. In 1989 she became the first Soviet citizen to enrol for a full-time degree in the United States while retaining Soviet citizenship.

In 2006 she was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers and named one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists in 2007. She has published two novels: The Dream Life of Sukhanov (2006) and The Concert Ticket (published in the US as The Line) in April 2010. Olga lives in Washington D.C.

Abridged by Jeremy Osborne

Directed by Marilyn Imrie
A Sweet Talk Production for BBC Radio 4. Show less