We're delighted to welcome novelist Sarvat Hasin to Rare Birds to discuss her new novel Strange Girls. 

Strange girls is 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?

Sarvat will be in conversation with Rachel Ashenden.

Tickets are £5 and can be redeemed against any purchase on the evening of the event. 

Timings

• Doors open from: 6:30pm
• Talk begins: 7:00pm 
• Talk ends: 8.30pm

About the book

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 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.

About the author

Sarvat Hasin is a novelist and dramaturg from Pakistan. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford. Her first novel, This Wide Night, was published by Penguin 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 (Dialogue Books, Hachette UK) won the Mo Siewcharran Prize and was shortlisted for the RSL Encore Award. She lives in London.

About the chair

Rachel Ashenden is a writer and editor based in Edinburgh, with bylines in ArtReview, Plaster, The List and others. She loves to write about aliens, visual art and working-class identity. Alongside, she is the Art Editor of The Skinny, a leading culture magazine in Scotland, and a Commissioning Editor for Art UK.

If you have any questions regarding the event or to request additional accessibility accommodations please contact hello@rarebirdsbooks.com