Novel about Paul Gaugin's Tahitian muse and child-bride longlisted for Walter Scott Prize

Ponnambalam’s impressive novel tells the story of Teha’amana, Tahitian teenage muse and child-bride to the French impressionist artist Paul Gaugin who spent time in Tahiti in the 1890s. Gaugin’s behaviour in relation to Teha’amana was controversial at best and like most muses Teha’amana herself has been lost to history. For Ponnambalam the driving force behind her book was to finally give the young woman a voice.

“I felt it was a story that should be told,” she says. “I found the fact that nobody had really written about her before surprising. It is quite a tragic story – Gaugin abused his power and people have excused that through time. Teha’amana and the other women he painted are not even talked about. Teha’amana disappeared and I wanted to find out what happened to her – I thought that she deserved that at least.”

The novel is bold in its scope, structure and polyphonic narrative style. There are diary entries from Gaugin’s daughter Aline who is about the same age as her father’s muse and as Teha’amana poses for Gaugin while he works on his painting The Spirit of the Dead Watching, she tells her story weaving together myths and legends from the island before the French colonialists introduced Christianity.

Ponnambalam is delighted to have been longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize alongside established novelists such as Robert Harris, William Boyd, Lucy Caldwell and Elizabeth Lowry. “It feels amazing, it is such an honour,” she says. “I really didn’t expect it because – there are some incredible books on that list – but also my book is quite unusual. It is not a conventional piece of historical fiction because it uses lots of different forms – it is part poetic and there is the mythology and the diary entries. I am so grateful that the judges saw something in it and so happy they feel it is a part of history that has not been explored before – because that is what I always felt and it is great to have that recognised.”

The journey to publication was quite a long one. Ponnambalam, who graduated from the National Film and Television School in 1998, was working as a director in the film and TV industry when she read an article about Gaugin which included an image of The Spirit of the Dead Watching. “The piece was about how Gaugin left his wife and family in Europe to go to Tahiti and get back to an unspoilt world where he could explore and experiment in his artwork, but it was the image that struck me – I felt a deep connection with that girl and wanted to know more about her.”

In 2003 while she was doing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia she decided to embark upon writing Teha’amana’s story and began doing some research. “Gaugin’s diaries were important – it was his perspective but I turned it on its head, I looked at missionaries’ accounts from the 18th century onwards which were interesting but quite dry, and I read a lot of mythology and legends form Tahiti. I loved those and incorporated ones that helped to push the story along.” After completing her MA she went back to London and the novel went on the back burner. “I was working and living my life, still trying to finish the story but there were a lot of stop-starts – at one point I tried to make a film of it which almost came off but didn’t.”

In 2018 she was awarded a grant to visit Tahiti, where she found out more about Teha’amana’s life (and death) after Gaugin left from a priest orator – and that provided her with the impetus to finish writing the novel. “Going to Tahiti put things in perspective and I really went for it when I got back. I finished it at the end of 2019 and got the publishing deal in 2020. Bluemoose absolutely loved it – they jumped on it when they read it and two years later it was published. The book is still with me but it is kind of separate now – I am so happy that Teha’amana’s story is finally out there.”

I Am Not Your Eve is published by Bluemoose Books. Bluemoosebooks.com