A collage of five Penguin authors set against a purple background

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Features

‘It was the first time I saw myself in literature’: Penguin authors on the book they wish they read in school

Authors on local libraries for Penguin 2019

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How my local library changed my life

A House for Alice

'A stunning multi-generational kaleidoscope of London' Bernardine Evaristo 
 
'A wise, tender novel about family and love' Monica Ali 
 
After fifty years in London, Alice wants to return home to Nigeria. Her three daughters are divided on whether she stays or goes, and in the wake of their father’s death, the imagined stability of the family begins to fray. Meanwhile youngest sister Melissa has never let go of a love she lost, and Michael in return, even though he is now married to Nicole, is haunted by the failed perfection of the past. 
Spanning three generations and set against the shadows of a nation in turmoil, these ordinary people confront fundamental questions. How to raise our children? How to do right by our parents? And how, in the midst of everything, do we satisfy ourselves? 
'Heart and humour in abundance . . . The people on the page are real and raw' The Times 
 
'So arresting, characterful, and so beautiful' Candice Carty-Williams 
 
'I adored it. Her writing is exquisite: every sentence a jewel' Elizabeth Day

Evans's writing is...subtle but grounded, lyrical yet accessible. Her characters feel real, their interactions - particularly that tense space where the political and domestic meet - nuanced

[An] ambitious tale of a family in contemporary London... [Evans's] wide cast of women are deftly drawn. There's heart and humour in abundance

The sheer vitality of Evans's dynamic prose... renders almost hypnotic her constant toggling between the prosaic and the metaphysical. There are some deft set pieces too, dramatising intimacy's most finely nuanced dynamics

A warm but devastating narrative, dealing with the fallout of the Grenfell tragedy... Like any Evans novel, it is unputdownable

Harper's Bazaar, *Books to Look Out For 2023*

One of our most outstanding writers . . . A House for Alice [is] a stunning multi-generational kaleidoscope of London . . . Evans writes with exceptional profundity and is exemplary at exploring the inner workings of her fictional characters through a prose style so poetic you want to languish in her sentences.

A wise, tender novel about family and love that explores the tension between duty and desire and the question of what 'home' really means

Monica Ali, author of Brick Lane and Love Marriage

I adored it. Her writing is exquisite: every sentence a jewel; every paragraph containing some insight that makes you draw breath with its rightness

Elizabeth Day, author of How To Fail and Magpie

At every point, whether sad or funny, A House for Alice is compassionate and sharp

Ambitious in scope ... The story is engrossing and moving

Diana Evans is fast proving herself a novelist to rank alongside Anne Tyler, so adept is she at parsing life's longings and upheavals... highly enjoyable, tenderly wrought

This intimate, melodic novel explores notions of home, family and long-held secrets

A rich evocation of south London, a poignant account of a dwindling marriage and a lovely celebration of music

An impressive sequel to 2018's Ordinary People

Diana Evans is the author of the novels 26a, The Wonder, Ordinary People and A House for Alice. She was the inaugural winner of the Orange Award for New Writers for 26a, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel, the Guardian First Book, the Commonwealth Best First Book and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Ordinary People won the 2019 South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, for which A House for Alice was also a finalist. A former dancer, she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, her journalism and nonfiction appearing in Time magazine, the Guardian, Vogue and the Financial Times among others. She lives in London. 
 
 
www.diana-evans.com

'A stunning multi-generational kaleidoscope of London' Bernardine Evaristo 
 
'A wise, tender novel about family and love' Monica Ali 
 
Melissa and her sisters are in conflict. After fifty years in London, their mother wants to return home to Nigeria, leaving behind a web of resentments and secrets lately disturbed by the sudden demise of their father. Should Alice stay here, or can her daughters work together to grant her wish? 
 
Meanwhile Melissa has never quite let go of a love she lost, and Michael in return, even while married to the sparkling Nicole, is haunted by the failed perfection of the past. As Alice&rsquo;s final decision draws closer, all that is 
hidden between Melissa and her siblings, Michael and Nicole, rises to the surface . . . 
 
'Heart and humour in abundance . . . The people on the page are real and raw' The Times 
 
'So arresting, characterful, and so beautiful' Candice Carty-Williams 
 
'I adored it. Her writing is exquisite: every sentence a jewel' Elizabeth Day

The Wonder

From the author of the Women's Prize-shortlisted Ordinary People - this is a dazzling novel about the fight to achieve one's dream, and an unsolved disappearance at the heart of a family

The most dazzling depiction of the world of dance since Ballet Shoes'

Her prose is airbound at times - an exhilarating celebration of rhythm, sway and leap

Darkens from an absorbing mystery into a touching reckoning... Most striking is the delicacy and power with which Evans depicts emotional disturbance

The story is complex, clever, seamlessly achieved, its many currents blending in harmony, sometimes in conflict, to recreate that sense of randomness and accident that resemble the truth of life in the chancy present...The author's passion burns on the page, along with an almost tactile relish of the act of writing itself

A serious work of art with sentences like ribbons of silk winding around a skeleton of haunting imagery... Evans was born to write this novel

The Wonder embraces its theme with great heart. It's hard not to be seduced by its talented, difficult hero

Evans interweaves the strands of her three-generation narrative with an exhilarating sense of place and period

Sparkles with mood, music and the sway of street life

Like the movement of the dancers it describes, it feels always, captivatingly, 'meant'

Evans...writes with eye-catching fluidity, gracefully pirouetting between Notting Hill in the 1990s, and the Caribbean a decade earlier

Evans communicates the joy that comes out of, and the hard work that goes into, dance. She also has a keen eye and a neat way of communicating what she sees.

Diana Evans was a dancer before becoming a journalist and author. She has contributed to the Independent, Marie Claire, the Guardian, the Observer, Harper's Bazaar, the Daily Telegraph and many other publications, and holds an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. Her first novel, 26a, received a Betty Trask award, a nomination for the Guardian First Book Award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel of the Year Award. It was the inaugural winner of the Orange Award for New Writers and has been translated into twelve languages. She lives in London.

‘Evans interweaves the strands of her three-generation narrative with an exhilarating sense of place and period’ Daily Telegraph 
 
Read the dazzling family mystery from the Women’s Prize-shortlisted author of Ordinary People 
 
As a child Lucas thought that all children who'd lost their parents lived on water. Now a restless young man still living with his sister Denise on their West London narrowboat, he determines to find out more about the unexplained disappearance of his father, the charismatic Jamaican dancer, Antoney Matheus. 
 
 Thus unfolds a journey from fifties Kingston to sixties Notting Hill and the host of unforgettable characters who peopled Antoney's theatrical world, most importantly Carla, Lucas's mother. The result is a haunting family saga of absence and inheritance, the battle between love and creativity, and what drives a young man to take flight... 
 
‘Sparkles with mood, music and the sway of life’ Marie Claire 
 
 
‘Diana Evans’s fiction is emotionally intelligent, dark, funny, moving. The sheer energy in her novels is enthralling. A brilliant craftswoman, a master of the form, she makes the reader ask important questions of themselves and makes them laugh at the same time’ Jackie Kay, British Council and National Centre for Writing's International Showcase on Britain's 10 best BAME writers

Ordinary People

A funny, sad novel about two couples on the brink of crisis from 'a lyrical and glorious writer' (Naomi Alderman)

**AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4 BOOK CLUB** 
 
 'Diana is so amazing when it comes to writing about humans and relationships... I don't know anyone who's as skilled as her' Candice Carty-Williams, Oprah Magazine 
 
 Two couples find themselves at a moment of reckoning. Melissa has a new baby and doesn't want to let it change her. Damian has lost his father and intends not to let it get to him. Michael is still in love with Melissa but can't quite get close enough to her to stay faithful. Stephanie just wants to live a normal, happy life on the commuter belt with Damian and their three children, but his bereavement is getting in the way. 
 
 Set in London to an exhilarating soundtrack, Ordinary People is an intimate study of identity and parenthood, sex and grief, friendship and ageing, and the fragile architecture of love. 
 
 'I am shouting from the rooftops to anyone who will listen about this book. It's so so good - realistic and funny and so truthful it almost winded me' Dolly Alderton 
 
 'I just finished Ordinary People by Diana Evans and it is utterly exquisite. What a writer she is - the depth of her insight, the grace of her sentences' Elizabeth Day, Twitter

Diana Evans is a lyrical and glorious writer; a precise poet of the human heart

Thoughtful and intelligently observed... Evans's delicate prose weaves issues of racial identity and politics into the narrative so that they never feel heavy-handed...a deftly observed, elegiac portrayal of modern marriage, and the private – often painful – quest for identity and fulfilment in all its various guises

Ordinary People...is very insightful… a detailed, well observed description of modern marriage

It could easily be reimagined for the screen, though the film would not capture the sheer energy and effervescence of Evans’s funny, sad, magnificent prose

Diana Evans’s fiction is emotionally intelligent, dark, funny, moving. The sheer energy in her novels is enthralling. A brilliant craftswoman, a master of the form, she makes the reader ask important questions of themselves and makes them laugh at the same time

Achieves a moody, velvety atmosphere, as though events were unfolding under amber-tinted bulbs...offers a precise sketch of the British black middle class, with a daring fifth-act twist

Evans gives us romance going cold with just as pitiless a precision as Flaubert in Madame Bovary... Evans's prose is magnificent: it's as if she measured each sentence, trimmed the excess weight, then fitted it into place

One of the very many things that makes this book exceptional is the even-handed sympathy and unflinching fidelity with which Evans charts the changing weather both of her protagonists’ emotions and family life. She excels at dialogue and she’s also a soulful lyrical chronicler of London in all its moods and guises

I’m currently very much enjoying Diana Evans’s novel Ordinary People, which takes a forensic look at the pleasures and perils of marriage and parenting and modern London living

Ordinary People offers a unique insight into the complexities and the challenges of modern life, identity and that lovely little thing we call love. From the moment I started to read it I was absolutely gripped - that’s how good it is. It is a beautifully crafted, honest exploration of how relationships are forged and deconstructed, and how the everyday and the remarkable can exist side by side.

Benjamin Zephaniah, South Bank Sky Arts Awards 2019

There is something radical in how Evans depicts the lives of young, black people, faithfully, fully and quietly

Ordinary People is a very funny book...a reminder of the power that only the novel has: to show you a familiar world from someone else's perspective

Sparkling... Rich, complex and quietly extreme, Ordinary People is a forensic study of human relationships, one that finds, like the best novels, universality in the specific. It is also a supreme London novel... In short, it's a joy from start to finish

Does literary fiction have a blind spot when it comes to race? When a novel like Diana Evans's Ordinary People feels unusual, you have to wonder... This is a wonderful novel – generous, clear-sighted and rich with the old-fashioned pleasure of characters you're left impatient to revisit

That rarest thing: a literary novel about real, recognizable human beings—a poignant portrait of middle life in London's middle class. Evans has given us four thirtysomething characters so perfectly drawn that they seem to come from a brilliant Netflix dramedy, but has rendered them with a classical prose so confident that it seems to come from a 19th century novel. Beach reading for the thinking beachgoer: as intelligent and insightful as it is hilariously entertaining.

Ordinary People is that rarest of books – a portrait that lays bare the normality of black family life in suburban London, while revealing its deepest psyche, its tragedies, its hopes and its magic. The words are infused with a beauty that leaves the reader spellbound and yet astounded by the familiarity of it all. I had not realised how much I longed for characters like these until I found them, brought alive here with such compassion. A wondrous book.

Ordinary People sings with every word. The writing is pitch perfect, the underlying politics of race and gender is never heavy handed, and the characterisation of south London is enviable. I know these streets and they beat to the music that runs through this book...a lyrical and beautiful story. It's a triumph

Christie Watson, author of The Language of Kindness

Diana Evans writes exquisitely beautifully about the interior landscapes of human relationships set against the urban and suburban cityscapes of London. Her characters are portrayed with depth, perceptiveness and complexity, and through the descriptions of their emotional journeys, we discover a language to understand ourselves

Diana Evans has masterfully crafted a beautiful, nuanced story about love, loss, and redemption. With compelling prose and an uncanny insight into the questions life throw at us as human beings, she has established herself as a voice to behold.

Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Here Comes the Sun

Evans' prose has a musical quality

A wonderfully warm and intelligent novel

13 new books to put a spring in your step’, mention: ‘Ordinary London lives are captured with lyricism and integrity… A quiet, vividly-drawn novel about the moments of angst and joy that make up everyday life.

Sheer energy and effervescence… Funny, sad, magnificent prose.

The agony of ordinary life is what makes Ordinary People an absorbing read. Evans gives us an entirely readable account of relationships, recognising how they defeat us, encircle us and leave us gasping for air.

Rich, complex and quietly extreme… A joy from start to finish.

A painfully accurate analysis of a life stage.

[An] impressively controlled tale of marital disharmony, parental ambivalence and lost identity… There’s a deep underlying sadness here, but it’s a rewarding and ruthlessly funny novel.

This is a highly enjoyable novel, full of wit and sharp observation

Evans is a superb writer of emotional moments: how enchanting they are, how they both resist and inspire description… Evans’s prose is always magnificent, composed and unshowy

A sympathetic and smart study of two metropolitan couples on the brink. Evans paints a quietly agonising picture of everyday life that is at once specific and timeless

Steeped in London’s grit and enduring allure, this is a psychologically acute, sexy, funny and hugely affecting novel

The compromises we make in marriage and as parents are explored in Evans’ lyrical and entertaining study of two thirtysomething couples on the brink. With its accompanying playlist of Faith Evans, Amy Winehouse and Jay-Z, a beat pulses through this slice of south London life, as Evans’ characters celebrate Obama’s victory and come to terms with the end of their salad days.

Evans' writing is like water; her sentences ebb and flow and change course, mirroring the Thames as it wends its way in and around the characters' lives

An amazing book full of wisdom and empathy

An immersive look into friendship, parenthood, sex, and grief - as well as the fragility of love. It is told with such detail, you're left wanting more

Evans is extraordinarily good on the minutiae of grief, family, and the fragility of love

**AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4 BOOK CLUB** 
 
'Diana is so amazing when it comes to writing about humans and relationships... I don't know anyone who's as skilled as her' Candice Carty-Williams, Oprah Magazine 
 
Two couples find themselves at a moment of reckoning. Melissa has a new baby and doesn't want to let it change her. Damian has lost his father and intends not to let it get to him. Michael is still in love with Melissa but can't quite get close enough to her to stay faithful. Stephanie just wants to live a normal, happy life on the commuter belt with Damian and their three children, but his bereavement is getting in the way. 
 
Set in London to an exhilarating soundtrack, Ordinary People is an intimate study of identity and parenthood, sex and grief, friendship and ageing, and the fragile architecture of love. 
 
'I am shouting from the rooftops to anyone who will listen about this book. It's so so good - realistic and funny and so truthful it almost winded me' Dolly Alderton 
 
'I just finished Ordinary People by Diana Evans and it is utterly exquisite. What a writer she is - the depth of her insight, the grace of her sentences' Elizabeth Day, Twitter

Winner of the Orange Award for New Writers

Diana Evans is the new literary voice of multicultural Britain. Her unforgettable first novel has all the heartbreak of Brick Lane and all the vibrancy of White Teeth, but a very special magic of its own.

A hugely assured and very moving first novel

A remarkable first novel...vibrant...exotic

The Great Neasden Novel has arrived...Haunting and cherishable...A hugely promising debut

A dazzling debut...I adored this book; I defy anyone to read the final pages without tears in their eyes. Easily the best book of the year so far

This sparky debut novel... Enthralling from the first page, this bittersweet fusion of fairytales and nightmares is sugared by nostalgia and salted with sadness, Hephzibah Anderson, Daily Mail

'This is a satisfying book, full of energy and charm'

'Very enjoyable...Evans writes with tremendous verve and dash. Her ear for dialogue is superb, and she has wit and sharp perception...A consistently readable book filled with likeable characters: a study of loss that has great heart and humour'

'A serious and accomplished first novel, an affecting study of togetherness and separation in a family, a marriage and, most importantly, between the twins'

'An exciting and vibrant read. It's a weird and wonderful fairy-tale about the lives of twins...26a is brilliant and a great read'

'Highly coloured, linguistically inventive...Evans has a powerful and often beguiling imagination'

'Sensual and poetic, as well as powerful and uncompromising...A mature, compelling and beautiful first novel'

'The writing is both mature and freshly perceptive, creating not only a warmly funny novel of a Neasden childhood - with its engaging minutiae of flapjacks and icepops, lip gloss and daisy hairclips - but a haunting account of the loss of innocence and mental disintegration.'

Diana Evans is a graduate of the University of East Anglia's Creative Writing MA and has published short fiction in a number of anthologies. She has worked as a journalist and arts critic for Marie Claire, the Evening Standard, The Source and Pride magazine, and writes regularly for the Independent and the Stage. She lives in West London.

**WINNER OF THE ORANGE AWARD FOR NEW WRITERS** 
 
‘A remarkable first novel...vibrant...exotic’ Sunday Times 
 
Discover the critically acclaimed debut from the Women’s Prize-shortlisted author of Ordinary People 
 
Identical twins, Georgia and Bessi Hunter, live in the loft of 26 Waifer Avenue. It is a place of beanbags, nectarines and secrets, and visitors must always knock before entering. Down below there is not such harmony. Their Nigerian mother puts cayenne pepper on her Yorkshire pudding and has mysterious ways of dealing with homesickness; their father angrily roams the streets of London, prey to the demons of his Derbyshire upbringing. 
 
Forced to create their own identities, the Hunter children build a separate universe. Their elder sister Bel discovers sex, high heels and organic hairdressing whilst the twins prepare for a flapjack empire. It is when the reality comes knocking that the fantasies of childhood start to give way. How will Georgia and Bessi cope in a world of separateness and solitude, and which of them will be stronger? 
 
‘Hugely assured and very moving’ Mark Haddon 
 
‘Diana Evans’s fiction is emotionally intelligent, dark, funny, moving. The sheer energy in her novels is enthralling. A brilliant craftswoman, a master of the form, she makes the reader ask important questions of themselves and makes them laugh at the same time’ Jackie Kay, British Council and National Centre for Writing's International Showcase on Britain's 10 best BAME writers 
 
Winner of the British Book Award for deciBel Writer of the Year 
 Shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award 
 Shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award 
 Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Best First Book Award 
 Shortlisted for the Times/Southbank Show Breakthrough Award 
 Recipient of the Betty Trask Award 
 Longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award

Diana Evans

A pleasure and an invigoration

Evans’s nonfiction marries that faith in the value of subjective experience to a fierce intellect; the result is a fascinating overview not only of a writer’s evolution but of the shifts in our understanding of art as…”activism and community”

Perceptive and empathetic... This was always going to be a book that grabs you by the lapels and insists on you listening but all the same, you do emerge impressed and better informed -- and also kind of windswept and happy

There is a depth and integrity to Diana Evans’s writing; every piece feels beautifully sewn together and complete

Thoughtfully layered pieces... deeply personal

Luminously questioning, always intelligent and unafraid of confronting the impact others can have on us

ORE AGBAJE-WILLIAMS, author of The Three of Us

An intimate and moving meditation on the mysteries of writing and the pleasures of reading. Elegant in tone and finely wrought in form, it is a deeply insightful, and also profoundly enjoyable, collection

A celebration of a career that has been anything but ordinary and an intellectual mind forever evolving. A blueprint for all of us straddling between fiction and journalism, who want to create meaningful, transcendent work

CHARLIE BRINKHURST-CUFF, editor of Mother Country

[A] compelling collection of essays… an insightful examination of both the cultural and deeply personal events that have influenced the making of a great writer

One of our most outstanding writers

Evans is always, always on the finest of forms

And Other Conversations

'A pleasure and an invigoration' Guardian 
'A moving, witty and seductive anthology' Financial Times 
'Every piece feels beautifully sewn together and complete’ BERNARDINE EVARISTO 
 
Crafted over twenty-five years, I Want to Talk to You invites you into a conversation about literature, art and music, identity, grief and everything in between 
 
As a young journalist, Diana Evans was catapulted overnight into the role of culture editor, going on to interview a roster of stars including Lauryn Hill, Viola Davis, Alice Walker and Edward Enninful. 
 
In these portraits of contemporary icons, the author remains the observer. Alongside them, in pieces collected here for the first time, we also see her turning the lens on herself. We watch as she dances on stages in London and travels through Cuba. We sit beside her desk as she develops her voice as a writer, shaped by her love for Jean Rhys, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison. We walk by her side as she navigates the world – her family and the midlife sandwich, reflections on fashion, yoga, the British monarchy and lockdowns, and the lasting impact of George Floyd and Grenfell. 
 
'Truly insightful, conversational and unique... Absolutely brilliant' ORE AGBAJE-WILLIAMS 
'Intimate and moving... Elegant in tone and finely wrought in form' EKOW ESHUN 
'A celebration of a career that has been anything but ordinary and an intellectual mind forever evolving' CHARLIE BRINKHURST-CUFF

Diana Evans

Praise for I Want to Talk to You

A pleasure and an invigoration

Evans’s nonfiction marries that faith in the value of subjective experience to a fierce intellect; the result is a fascinating overview not only of a writer’s evolution but of the shifts in our underst ...

Perceptive and empathetic... This was always going to be a book that grabs you by the lapels and insists on you listening but all the same, you do emerge impressed and better informed -- and also kind ...

A pleasure and an invigoration

Evans’s nonfiction marries that faith in the value of subjective experience to a fierce intellect; the result is a fascinating overview not only of a writer’s evolution but of the shifts in our underst ...

Perceptive and empathetic... This was always going to be a book that grabs you by the lapels and insists on you listening but all the same, you do emerge impressed and better informed -- and also kind ...

A pleasure and an invigoration

Evans’s nonfiction marries that faith in the value of subjective experience to a fierce intellect; the result is a fascinating overview not only of a writer’s evolution but of the shifts in our underst ...

Perceptive and empathetic... This was always going to be a book that grabs you by the lapels and insists on you listening but all the same, you do emerge impressed and better informed -- and also kind ...

Books by Diana Evans

Articles featuring Diana Evans

‘It was the first time I saw myself in literature’: Penguin authors on the book they wish they read in school

How my local library changed my life

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