What is the title of your latest release?
STRANGE GIRLS
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
STRANGE GIRLS is about Aliya and Ava. At university, they meet and fall deeply into their own world, teaching each other how to be women and how to be writers, how to live in the world. They become everything to each other. But can it sustain? Years later, they meet again at a friend’s hen party to confront what happened between them. What happens to a love story with nowhere to go? And who has the right to tell a story that happens between two people?
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
The book takes place mostly in and around London, which is now both my home and muse. Aliya and Ava are both strangers to England, as I was once. I wanted to write about it through the eyes of two people who are discovering it for the first time.
Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?
Both of them would be fun lunch company though maybe not that at the same time! I’d feel like a third wheel. Martinis with Ava, dinner with Aliya.
What are three words that describe your hero?
Ava is raw, ambitious and sharp-tongued. Aliya is a dreamer, wallflower and indecisive.
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
Writing two narrative voices that were in opposition with each other in this way was a real learning curve. Both Ava and Aliya have a vision of their relationship that mirrors each other. I wanted their hurts to fit together like puzzle pieces. Weaving them together took patience. I learned how to redraft in a way that felt very different from anything else I’ve worked on.
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I wait till I’m done! I find drafting needs a certain amount of momentum for me so I like to barrel on and then wait until I’ve had some distance to refine it.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
I need to have treats to get me through writing so I’m a big snacker: coffees, chocolate, crisps. When I’m drafting, I don’t have time to cook anything elaborate so it’s a lot of instant noodles and quorn nuggets.
Describe your writing space/office!
Two years ago, I bought a vintage bureau on the internet. It’s from the 1930s, poorly painted in dark blue and it is my favorite place to write. It is by the window so I can look out while I stare into the distance. I love its hidden compartments that I can hide notes in and decks of tarot cards (I like to pull ones when I get stuck writing). There are also bookshelves so I can keep my research or reference books all in one place.
Who is an author you admire?
Elaine Castillo whose novels are so different from each other but both absolute stone cold bangers.
Is there a book that changed your life?
Little Women was formative for me. I wanted to be a different March sister every time I read it.
Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published). Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I found out Dutton was publishing my book at 10 in the evening on a cold dark February Monday. It was such a lift – a moment that really changed my confidence as a writer.
What’s your favorite genre to read?
I like to read quite widely! When I feel stuck, I turn to children’s books or YA to get myself going.
What’s your favorite movie?
When Harry Met Sally.
What is your favorite season?
Autumn and its crispest days: my favorite time to be out for a walk or a coffee, preferably ending in a pub with a fire.
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
Last year I had an almost perfect birthday taking myself out for a swim in a lido and then for lunch.
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
Sorry, Baby which came out last year is an exceptional debut by Eva Victor that I think about often. I love storytelling that plays with light and dark – the funny parts of life even when things are shit.
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Can’t go wrong with a curry.
What do you do when you have free time?
Running, swimming, cinema for weeknights and long hikes and galleries for weekends.
What can readers expect from you next?
I’m always interested in love stories and what draws people to each other. So more of that, wherever they might be.
STRANGE GIRLS by Sarvat Hasin
Narrator: Aasiya Shah, Nadia Albina
A Novel
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.V
Women’s Fiction Friendship | Coming of Age | Fiction Literary [ Dutton, On Sale: March 10, 2026, Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook, ISBN: 9798217179527 / eISBN: 9798217179534 ]
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About Sarvat Hasin
Sarvat Hasin is from Pakistan. She has a master’s in creative writing from theUniversity of Oxford. Her first novel, This Wide Night, was published by Penguin Indiaand longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Her second book You Can’tGo Home Again was published in 2018 and featured in Vogue India‘s and The Hindu‘sbest of the year lists. Her third novel The Giant Dark (Dialogue Books, Hachette UK)was a runaway critical success, won the Mo Siewcharran Prize, and was shortlisted forthe RSL Encore Award. Strange Girls is her US debut. She lives in London and works atthe Almeida Theatre.Sarvat Hasin is from Pakistan. She has a master’s in creative writing from theUniversity of Oxford. Her first novel, This Wide Night, was published by Penguin Indiaand longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Her second book You Can’tGo Home Again was published in 2018 and featured in Vogue India‘s and The Hindu‘sbest of the year lists. Her third novel The Giant Dark (Dialogue Books, Hachette UK)was a runaway critical success, won the Mo Siewcharran Prize, and was shortlisted forthe RSL Encore Award. Strange Girls is her US debut. She lives in London and works atthe Almeida Theatre.
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