A bold reimagining of Eve’s journey after Eden, set in ancient Mesopotamia and beyond, for readers who crave feminist myth retellings and spiritual exploration.
Exiled to a desolate and harsh New Earth, in this Paradise Lost retelling, Eve faces relentless toil, pain, and the resentment of Adam, who blames her for shattering their Paradise.
But even in this barren world, Eve’s curiosity only grows. When Eve and Adam discover a thriving civilization in the fertile valleys of Mesopotamia, Adam is able to find peace, while Eve fights an irresistible pull further. She yearns to understand why she was created, to understand the god that made and abandoned her.
Can Eve find contentment with the vestiges of Eden that remain? Or will she dare to taste the fruit forbidden to her, once more?
In the end, Eve seeks to know the limits to her own power, to sate her hunger, once and for all. Navigating loves, betrayals, and the duties of motherhood from Nippur to the coastal city of Canaan and across the Aegean Sea to Cyprus, Eve will go as far as it takes.
But how many Edens will she forsake, along the way, to discover who creates them?
Will Eve cross the threshold from dust to divinity, at last? Or will she return to the river valley, empty-handed, a fractured family left in her wake?
For who before Eve has known the minds of the gods?
“Lucidly rendered from the first woman’s point of view, Eve manages to be essentially faithful to scripture and yet boldly original. As we should have seen all along, Eve is the hero of the story, and if God’s ways to men are to be justified, it can only be through her unique creative power.”
O’Connor’s thirst for knowledge takes classical Eve on a heroine’s journey. In Eve she is thirsty to drink in language, culture, and all the Creators to understand how the heart loves and the soul believes, how one lonely body can be a universe.
Despite its reimagining of a centuries-old mythology, every page of Eve is an urgent and brilliantly written odyssey of sensual passion, existential hunger and feminine rage that should be relevant and accessible to any modern reader. Fans of Christopher Moore’s Lamb or Neil Gaiman’s American Gods will be delighted by the ambitious weaving of ancient mythology with domestic drama in Eve, captivated by the visceral writing and relatable craving to uncover the purpose behind the human experience.
Eve is a lush, resonant novel that reimagines Eve’s wandering quest for the answers of existence.
