Art & Lies by Jeanette Winterson

A train hurtles through the future with three passengers on board: a disillusioned surgeon named Handel, whose humanity has been sacrificed to intellect; a woman artist named Picasso, cast out by a family that drove her to madness; and the lesbian poet Sappho, who has propagated her subversive gospel through centuries of censorship and exile. Out of their interwoven stories comes an impassioned, philosophical, and above all, daring novel that burns with phosphorescent prose on every page.

-------
One of the most audacious and provocative writers on either side of the Atlantic now gives readers a dazzling, arousing, and wise improvisation on art, Eros, language, and identity. 'A series of intense, artful musings that are exhilarating and visionary. . . . Unsettling yet strangely satisfying.'--Newsday.