Live Encounters Books-Reviews Volume Seven
November- December 2025
David Morgan Review of
Eve Meets Dante by Greta Sykes
Vanguard Press, 2025
Eve Meets Dante – a vision of hope
Eve Meets Dante, a new novel by London based writer Greta Sykes, puts women firmly centre stage and introduces us to some remarkable female pathbreakers from history.
I sat down with author and poet, Greta Sykes, in the kitchen of her North London home to have a relaxed discussion about some of the issues raised in her latest novel, the intriguingly titled, Eve Meets Dante and the reason why she felt compelled to write it. The sturdy pine kitchen table around which we were seated had witnessed many intense discussions over many years where we reflected on the state of the world, ethical matters, political struggles, the role of art, poetry, culture, cinema, human creativity and philosophy, among other topics. All these topics are touched on in the novel.
As if to emphasis the book’s theme, a striking recent photograph of Greta shot in profile alongside the Italian poet, Dante Alighieri, adorns the kitchen wall overlooking our conversation. Dante features in the novel, as the main guide, seer and the human embodiment of the spirit of poetry, who appears before the novel’s heroine in a kind of vision. Greta herself is an accomplished poet and views poetry as a vital expression of the human creative impulse, along with painting, another means of creative expression that is very important to her. One of her paintings graces the cover of the new book. I have known Greta now for some forty years, so I am well aware how seriously she takes the creative processes of writing and painting.
The subject of the new novel is unashamedly women and their place in history. It is a depressing but irrefutable fact that the further one looks back into the annals of human history the fewer women you will discover, and the fewer female voices will be heard. By this, I mean visible, real, named women and their biographies; women with distinctive personalities, voices and histories recorded and remembered for their participation in the shaping of their society and in contributing crucially to growth of human civilisation or what used to be called “progress” not only as mothers and nurturers, but as scientists, artists, leaders in religion and as political rulers. It is not that women were erased from the historical records; their activities were more often never even deemed worthy of being recorded in the first place. This is a cruel injustice inflicted on countless women over too many generations, as writers like Virginia Woolf, confronted in her book, A Room of One’s Own, where she examines the fate of women authors and imagines how women had to struggle to seek knowledge and learn for themselves.
Eve Meets Dante is Greta’s third novel in what she intends to be a tetralogy and it introduces the reader to the lives of several unique and still influential women from ancient and Medieval history, mostly from the Middle East region known to us as the fertile crescent and said to be the origins of human civilisation. In the novel, Greta combines her longstanding interests in the development of these ancient civilisations, the history of women and the writing of poetry, where is embodied in the personality of Italy’s national poet, Dante.
The novel opens with a vivid description of the agony of birth, the bringing of a new life into the world during a war ravaged world; it was October 1944: “My mother named me Eva. I was a new beginning, a new hope for her that war could end soon.”
As the novel unfold it introduces us to a disparate group of women from ancient myth, history and religion who are encountered by the story’s narrator, beginning with Beatrice, who was the inspiration for Dante’s remarkable poetry, and who Eva is surprised to meet with Dante, who remarks, “You thought we were far away in geography and time, but we are as near as your hand.” . This is clearly no ordinary realist novel.
The work combines elements of lyrical dream-like episodes and autobiographical aspects. There are imaginary encounters and dialogues with heroines from the pages of history, Biblical stories and poetry intermingled with vivid descriptions of the brutal real experiences of life in a ravaged country that is slowly picking itself up after a long catastrophic war. The book amounts to a powerful work of the imagination that captures all the hopes and struggles of one young woman and describes the great encouragement that she obtains from the eminent and courageous women met as she makes her journey through life growing from child into adult. In large part, the novel reflects many of the details of Greta’s own life and journey from post-war Germany to London.
After Beatrice, the other women that Eva guided by Dante meets are Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, Mary Magdalene, follower of Christ, Dido, Queen of Carthage, the Syrian Empress Zenobia, the Christian martyr Blandina, the scientist, Hypatia, the Christian martyr, Perpetua, the Queen of Sheba, poet Sappho, Byzantine empress, Theodora, Saint Etheldreda, the Medieval nun Roswitha of Saxony, the Benedictine abbess Hildegard von Bingen, the Ottoman ruler, Roxelana, Roman Queen, Tanaquil, and the renaissance painter, Artemisia Gentileschi. This is an impressive collection of women, and readers can be forgiven for not being aware of many of them; though they are neither obscure nor really erased from history, but most of them are certainly not exactly household names. It is one of the genuine achievements of this novel that these female figures are brought back to life for us and made to speak again directly to modern readers. As told by the author, the remarkable lives of these forceful women have much to say to us and insights to share with Eva, and the rest of us who open their minds to taking part in the voyage of discovery as the narrative unfolds.
Given that women’s histories have until recently been left to remain in obscurity, it is a laudable accomplishment that Greta has found so many inspirational women to feature in this impressively ambitious novel.
Greta interweaves the fictionalised stories of these individuals with vivid details of personal memories from her own childhood and teenage years to create a unique work of fiction that seeks to inspire by offering reflections on the true meaning of life and human liberation. During the course of the novel, Greta takes us on a fascinating journey that encompasses the achievements and struggles of these inspirational women, taking us into the world of the imagination and the challenges of the everyday lives of people experiencing global conflicts, warfare and societal collapse in the twentieth century. Greta herself lived through the ending of the second world war and the economic recovery in post-war Germany, a country that was divided in half by the Cold War. Her experiences of growing up in these harshly difficult times inform the themes of the novel and help shape the emotional texture of its writing. The personal experiences of uprooting to a new country and the challenges of establishing a home as a young mother in London, are also drawn on for material for the books she has written, Eve Meets Dante included. Her first novel, Under Charred Skies, was influenced by her family history, in particular that of her own mother. The second novel, The Defeat of Gilgamesh, explores some of the ancient stories that are featured in the latest work.
To return to my conversation with the author, I was curious to learn what had motivated her to write the book in the first place.
The novel cleverly combines passages of narrative based on the author’s own real life memories alongside completely imaginary dream-like incidents of meeting these renowned women. I wanted to know which of these parts would have been easiest to write. Greta told me that she found it “easier to write the passages about other women, rather than to find the right tone and brevity of the personal experiences”.
I was curious to know why she had chosen the particular women whom her alter ego, Eva, meets in the novel. Greta said that she had “selected the early civilisations on purpose as I think they help us understand our world better, by knowing what we are getting wrong.” Before sitting down to start the novel, Greta did a wide amount of reading and cites as a main source, ‘A History of Their Own’ by Bonnie S Anderson and Judith P Zinsser, a work of feminist history from 1989.
She went on to tell me that of the women featured, “some are very well known and admired, others I gathered through my wide and open reading list, for instance the story of Roxelana. I also wanted to include the heretics, the Christian martyrs who adhered to an older and more egalitarian Christian faith”. Personally, I found it extremely bold to include female Christian martyrs among this group of inspirational women, especially as our secular times are increasingly intolerant of organised religion and when Christianity is no longer a universal faith as in earlier ages.
Greta informed me that she wanted her readers to learn to feel good and powerful and in charge of their own lives. “Women’s subjugation lingers in the mind of any women and men. It’s a deep and long struggle to escape from it”, she insisted.
She describes the novel as part of her onward path towards better wisdom and said that of all the incidents that she has written, she was most pleased about the novel’s ending, which I wont divulged in this review, as it may spoil the experience of reading the novel. Others must find out for themselves why Greta was so pleased to think up the ending.
Turning to the structure of the book, I noticed that aspects of the novel evoke classic novels, such as the use of multiple stories, the close interweaving of the real and imaginary and the jumping in and out of different time zones, which makes it close to science fiction.
Greta says, that she “intended the novel to have the characteristics of literary novels with a focus on depth, internal life and motivation, philosophical and theological deliberations with the use of metaphor, imagery and symbolism.”
Projecting a positive message about human potential, Greta insists that her book is written “for those who are striving to overcome the subjugation of the past 2,000 years”.
Greta loves the process of writing, as is evident from reading the book. She also paints. These two creative activities, she says, are “two different ways of working out for myself, on the basis of creative work by others before me how I want to view the world. I want to be seen as one of the working artists and writers who continue to reflect the creativity of nature.”
In a culture that more often than not concentrates on the darker sides of the human personality, aggression, acquisitive individualism and selfishness, the novel celebrates an alternative set of values as it projects a world where compassion, empathy, sharing and love are its guiding principles. The story of Eva is motivated by a relentless quest for meaning and curiosity about the world around us in all its multifaceted aspects and emphasises the fundamental contribution of women towards making that new world a reality. Eva’s search represents the possibility of hope, happiness and love and the realisation of her dreams, which are ultimately the common dreams of every individual. It amounts to a refreshing counterblast to the negativity and cynicism that we frequently encounter in the pages of literature and more importantly in the life around us.
To conclude, it is not that you can simply escape the nightmare of existence through dreams, but it is through the experience of a waking dream that you can grasp the true power of the imagination and plunge into your inner thoughts to recognise the capacity for changing our circumstances at the most personal and wider social levels. This I take to be the powerful message conveyed by this ambitious novel.
Eve Meets Dante tells us that our salvation as a species can be secured through the power of human creativity and in choosing love and camaraderie over the suspicions, misunderstandings and conflicts that we witness driving the world headlong towards existential crisis and to the cusp of extinction. The book expresses a bold vision of hope in these dark times. It is a refreshingly inspiring read not least because it introduces us to some amazing women.
© David Morgan
David Morgan is a journalist and editor who has been producing print and online content for more than forty years. He has written articles and reviews for newspapers, the commercial press, political, current affairs and historical journals. He has edited numerous books concerning diverse themes in modern history and has authored and co-authored historical studies, with titles such as The Good Old Cause and Writers of the Left in an Age of Extremes (co-authored) for the Socialist History Society. David also writes poetry and has had his poems published in different publications. He is a member of the London Voices group of poets. David continues to pursue historical research into various areas.
Greta Sykes’ third novel came out in March this year. ‘Eve meets Dante’ invites the reader to join her on a captivating journey through time, weaving together the lives and legacies of extraordinary women from antiquity to the Renaissance. Together with her previous two novels ‘Under charred skies’ and ‘the defeat of Gilgamesh’ they form a trilogy exploring the fates of women in historical settings. Sykes has also published poetry volumes and a range of essays on psychology and politics which can be viewed on academia.edu. Some of them were previously published in liveencounters.net. Sykes is the convenor of the ‘London Voices’ poetry group which was founded in the 1970s. Sykes is a trained child psychologist who has worked for Camden Education Authority and London University.