Strange Girls

‘Touching, infuriating and painfully true, Strange Girls is a superlative novel by one of our most perceptive writers. Sarvat Hasin is an artist whose work demands to be read.’ Julia Armfield, author of Private Rites

‘Simply sublime-about that feverish, feral first finding of true friendship that becomes all-encompassing and reforms who you are.’ Kiran Milwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies

From award-winning author Sarvat Hasin comes a stunning novel about two estranged friends forced to reunite over one feverish weekend and reckon with the choices that tore them apart.

A decade has passed since Ava spoke to Aliya. Aliya has everything Ava wants – a room of her own and a publishing deal – and, worse, the thing Ava was certain neither of them had ever wanted: a sensible doctor husband. Arriving back in London for a mutual friend’s hen party, Ava is desperate to unpack the truth of their shared history and what they meant to each other.

Aliya and Ava first met in the halls of their historic campus with dreams built upon Emily Bronte, Brideshead Revisited and Richard Curtis films. Their connection was electric. They created a world of their own through the stories they wrote, influencing and borrowing from each other’s work. But when the end of university loomed, the real world began to pull them in opposite directions. Was their bond ever truly as strong as they thought? And what would become of the stories they told themselves about each other?

Weaving together their past and present, Strange Girls is an ingenious exploration of the ties forged in the intensity of youth, and the scars left when they break.

Author Biography

Sarvat Hasin is from Pakistan. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford. Her first novel, This Wide Night, was published by Penguin India and longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Her second book You Can’t Go Home Again was published in 2018 and featured in Vogue India’s and The Hindu’s best of the year lists. She won the Moth Writer’s Retreat Bursary in 2018 and in 2019, Mo Siewcharran Prize for The Giant Dark which came out in 2021. Her essays and poetry have appeared in publications such as Outsiders, The Mays Anthology, English PEN, and Harper’s Bazaar. She lives in London and works at the Almeida Theatre.