Strange Girls
On sale
12th March 2026
Price: £20
‘Sarvat Hasin is an artist whose work demands to be read’ Julia Armfield, author of Private Rites
‘A wonder of a novel’ Amy Twigg, author of Spoilt Creatures
‘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
Aliyah and Ava arrive in England from opposite corners of the world with dreams built upon Emily Brontë, Brideshead Revisited and Richard Curtis films. Instead, in the shadow of their historic, fairytale campus, they get the sense that they don’t belong. The two form a Vita-and-Virginia-like bond, building a world full of stories that they write together. For a time, they are inseparable in their identity as ‘strange girls’. When the end of university looms, they will have to return to the world where a devotion like this seems impossible to maintain.
Years later, Aliyah 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 what she really meant to Aliyah.
Was what they had – whatever you call it – real?
And what will become of the stories they tell themselves about one another?
‘A wonder of a novel’ Amy Twigg, author of Spoilt Creatures
‘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
Aliyah and Ava arrive in England from opposite corners of the world with dreams built upon Emily Brontë, Brideshead Revisited and Richard Curtis films. Instead, in the shadow of their historic, fairytale campus, they get the sense that they don’t belong. The two form a Vita-and-Virginia-like bond, building a world full of stories that they write together. For a time, they are inseparable in their identity as ‘strange girls’. When the end of university looms, they will have to return to the world where a devotion like this seems impossible to maintain.
Years later, Aliyah 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 what she really meant to Aliyah.
Was what they had – whatever you call it – real?
And what will become of the stories they tell themselves about one another?
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Reviews
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.
Intimate yet mysterious, Strange Girls is a tense and enthralling portrait of a relationship that resists definition: friendship, romance, sisterhood. 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.
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.
Luminous, tender and near mythic in its retelling of a female friendship. Strange Girls perfectly captures our desire to be seen-through friendship, through writing, through life. This novel had its grip on my heart from the very first pages.
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.