Strange Girls

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What to expect

*A 'Most Anticipated Book of 2026' as selected by DAZED, THE NEW ARAB and LITHUB*

'Touching, infuriating and painfully true . . . [Strange Girls] demands to be read' Julia Armfield
'Captures the messy, tense and beautiful struggles where friendship meets longing . . . I envy whoever reads it next for the very first time' Lucy Rose
'Dreamy, hypnotic . . . utterly gorgeous' Jennifer Saint

From award-winning author Sarvat Hasin comes a stunning novel about creativity, longing and all the words left unsaid. What happens to a love story that has nowhere to go, and who has the right to tell it?

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 Brontë, 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.

'Feverish, feral' Kiran Millwood Hargrave
'Sarvat Hasin is a storming talent' Daisy Johnson
'Intoxicating . . . I'm obsessed' Kat Dunn

Critics Review

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
Another dreamy, hypnotic novel from Sarvat Hasin, a writer who is a consummate expert in evoking the sweetness and pain of nostalgia . . . Utterly gorgeous.
Jennifer Saint, author of ARIADNE
Simply sublime - about that feverish, feral first finding of true friendship that becomes all-encompassing and reforms who you are.
Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of THE DANCE TREE
Sarvat Hasin is a storming talent and Strange Girls is a beautiful and yearning read.
Daisy Johnson, author of EVERYTHING UNDER
Vivid, layered, and sharp, Strange Girls is a striking portrait that captures the messy, tense, and beautiful struggles where friendship meets longing. Sarvat Hasin has penned a novel profoundly tender and unrelenting. I envy whoever reads it next for the very first time.
Lucy Rose, author of THE LAMB
Compulsive and all-consuming, Strange Girls charts the intoxicating waters of friendship where you are both seen too clearly and yet not at all. Hasin devastatingly evokes that fumbling age of identity construction, of finding meaning and purpose in another person when you fear there's none you can find in yourself, at once lost yet entirely particular. I'm obsessed.
Kat Dunn, author of HUNGERSTONE
A wonder of a novel. Tender and keen-eyed, with characters so lifelike you could reach out and touch them. Hasin's approach to storytelling remains singularly brilliant. I loved it.
Amy Twigg, author of SPOILT CREATURES
I absolutely ate Strange Girls up. Hasin writes fraught friendships, chaotic codependency and queer longing with consummate sensitivity and wryness.
Gráinne O'Hare, author of THIRST TRAP
A novel of rare clarity and insight, aching with a complex, deeply felt love. I was captivated and moved from the outset.
Megan Hunter, author of THE END WE START FROM
Luminous, tender and near mythic . . . This novel had its grip on my heart from the very first pages.
Freya Bromley, author of THE TIDAL YEAR
Strange Girls is a tense and enthralling portrait of a relationship that resists definition . . . Hasin writes love in all its troubling forms with beautiful nuance, and this novel is an entire world unto itself. You'll hate to leave it.
Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta, authors of FEAST WHILE YOU CAN
I adored Strange Girls. Beautifully written, Sarvat Hasin perfectly captures university life in the noughties, the all-consuming intimacy of closeted queer-coded relationships between young women and the unbearable weight of unspoken feelings. PERFECTION.
Alice Slater, author of DEATH OF A BOOKSELLER
Hasin plumbs the depths of obsessive, intense friendship; the beautiful, the sad and the heartbreaking. A breathtaking novel by one of the most exciting writers today.
Lizzie Huxley-Jones
Strange Girls is alive with the intoxicating intensity of youthful creative friendship-devotion, jealousy, and a shared hunger for art. Sarvat Hasin's fresh, tender writing stayed with me, capturing how deeply those early bonds can shape, and scar, a life.
Lisa Harding, author of THE WILDELINGS
Hasin's writing is evocative and addictive, layering in issues of class, place and race into an otherwise introspective and detailed novel.
Dazed
A novel both radiant with the brightness and wonder of youth, and wise-eyed with the dissolution of idealism. Sarvat Hasin is a brilliant chronicler of the human heart, and this book will move and enthral anyone who has been deeply entwined in friendship, love and nostalgia (that is, everyone!).
Sharlene Teo, author of PONTI

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