Her first novel,
26a, "a
Bildungsroman that centres its storyline on the growing process of a pair of identical twins of Nigerian-British origin, Georgia and Bessi" growing up in Neasden, was published in 2005 to wide critical acclaim and has since been translated into 12 languages. It was shortlisted in the first novel category for both the
Whitbread Book Award and the
Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and was the inaugural winner of the
Orange Award for New Writers.
Carol Birch, writing in
The Independent, said of
26a that "Evans writes with tremendous verve and dash. Her ear for dialogue is superb, and she has wit and sharp perception" and though she has her criticisms, concludes that Evans "has produced a consistently readable book filled with likeable characters: a study of loss that has great heart and humour." According to
Diriye Osman in the
Huffington Post: "Here was a Bildungsroman of such daring and sustained elegance that it felt like a gorgeous dance of a novel. In many ways, it is apropos that this book which focused on the secret bond that exists between twins was followed in 2009 by the equally masterful
The Wonder, a novel rooted in the world of dance." Evans' second novel,
The Wonder (2009), explores the world of dancing in the context of Caribbean immigration to the UK, London gentrification, and the bond between father and son. Her third novel,
Ordinary People (2018), is a portrait of family life for two black couples in their 30s in South London in a year bookended by the
election of Barack Obama and the
death of Michael Jackson.
Ordinary People was the winner of the
South Bank Sky Arts Award and shortlisted for the
Women's Prize for Fiction, the
Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and the
Rathbones Folio Prize. Her fourth novel,
A House for Alice, was published in 2023, characterised as "the first memorialisation of Grenfell in fiction", it received Evans's second shortlisting for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. ''Harper's Bazaar'' described the novel as 'a state-of-the-nation masterpiece'. Also a journalist, Evans has contributed essays and literary criticism to
Marie Claire,
The Independent,
The Observer,
The Guardian,
The Daily Telegraph, the
Financial Times,
Time,
The New York Review of Books and ''
Harper's Bazaar''. She is an associate lecturer of Creative Writing at
Goldsmiths, University of London. She is a patron of the
SI Leeds Literary Prize for unpublished fiction by Black and Asian women in the UK. She is also a 2014–16
Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the
London College of Fashion and a 2016–17 Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the
University of Kent. ==Publications==