*A ‘Most Anticipated Book of 2026’ as selected by DAZED, THE NEW ARAB and LITHUB*
‘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
‘Simply sublime-about that feverish, feral first finding of true friendship that becomes all-encompassing and reforms who you are.’ Kiran Milwood Hargrave
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.
‘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
‘Simply sublime-about that feverish, feral first finding of true friendship that becomes all-encompassing and reforms who you are.’ Kiran Milwood Hargrave
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.
Newsletter Signup
By clicking ‘Sign Up,’ I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Hachette Book Group’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Use
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.
Simply sublime - about that feverish, feral first finding of true friendship that becomes all-encompassing and reforms who you are.
A novel of rare clarity and insight, aching with a complex, deeply felt love. I was captivated and moved from the outset.
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!).
Sarvat Hasin is a storming talent and Strange Girls is a beautiful and yearning read.
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.
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.
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.
Hasin's writing is evocative and addictive, layering in issues of class, place and race into an
otherwise introspective and detailed novel.
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.
Another dreamy, hypnotic novel from Sarvat Hasin, a writer who is a consummate expert in evoking the sweetness and pain of nostalgia . . . Utterly gorgeous.