Strange Girls - by Sarvat Hasin (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

"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 Our Wives Under the Sea

An award-winning international author's stunning US debut about two estranged friends who are 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. During the years of silence, Ava's life has remained at a standstill, while Aliya got the one thing they both wanted more than anything: a book deal. Forced back together at a mutual friend's bachelorette in London, Ava returns to Aliya's doorstep, desperate to unpack the truth of their shared history--and what they meant to each other.

When the two first met in the halls of their historic campus, their connection was electric. Aliya and Ava created a world of their own through the stories they wrote, influencing and borrowing from each other's work. But when the end of college loomed, the real world began to pull them in opposite directions. Was their bond ever truly as strong as Aliya thought? And what would become of the stories they told themselves about each other?

Weaving together the friends' past and present, Strange Girls is an ingenious portrait of a fraught friendship, and an exploration of the ties forged in the intensity of the college experience, and the scars left when they break.

Review Quotes

Praise for 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 Our Wives Under the Sea

"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 Mercies

"Sarvat Hasin is a storming talent and Strange Girls is a beautiful and yearning read."
--Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under

"Intimate yet mysterious, Strange Girls is a tense and enthralling portrait of a relationship that resists definition: friendship, romance, sisterhood. Sarvat 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 The View Was Exhausting

"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

"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 enthrall anyone who has been deeply entwined in friendship, love, and nostalgia. (that is, everyone!)"
--Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti

"Strange Girls is another dreamy, hypnotic novel from Sarvat Hasin, a writer who is a consummate expert in evoking the sweetness and pain of nostalgia. It's a poetic ode to yearning and desire; a book that transports the reader to hazy sunlit afternoons, the faint scent of cigarette smoke, lipstick on wine glasses, words that go unspoken and love that lingers forever. Utterly gorgeous."
--Jennifer Saint, author of Ariadne

"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

About the Author

Sarvat Hasin is a novelist and dramaturg from Pakistan. She has a masters in creative writing from the University of Oxford. Her first novel, This Wide Night, was published by Penguin Random House 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. Her third novel, The Giant Dark, was a runaway critical success, won the Mo Siewcharran Prize, and was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Encore Award. Strange Girls is her US debut. She lives in London.