'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 * Sunday Times *
[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 Times *
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 * Guardian *
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. * Bernardine Evaristo, Vogue *
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 * Telegraph *
Ambitious in scope ... The story is engrossing and moving * Independent *
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 * Daily Mail *

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