I Am Not Your Eve

By Devika Ponnambalam

I Am Not Your Eve is the story of Teha’amana, Tahitian muse and child-bride of the painter Paul Gauguin. She shares her thoughts as he works on one of his masterpieces, The Spirit of The Dead Keeps Watch, a work so important to Gauguin that it haunts his later self -portrait. As Teha’amana tells her story, other voices of the island rise: Hina goddess of the moon, a lizard watching from the eaves, Gauguin’s mask of Teha’amana carved from one of the trees.

Woven in are the origin myths that cradled Polynesia before French colonists brought the Christian faith. Distant diary entries by Gauguin’s daughter Aline – the same age as her father’s new ‘wife’ – recall the other hemisphere of his life. This is a novel that gives Teha’amana a voice: one that travels with the myths and legends of the island, across history and asks now to be heard.