2025 HWA Debut Crown Award (longlist)
‘Entertaining and moving…I came to love these four women as though they were my sisters’ TRACY CHEVALIER
‘I ADORED it. What a fantastic read. My book of the year’ JILL MANSELL
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They knew they were changing history.
They didn’t know they would change each other.
‘Beautifully captures the power of friendship and love in the wake of extraordinary loss. It was a pleasure to read’ Pip Williams, author of The Dictionary of Lost Words
‘Sparkling … An inspiring reminder of the trail blazed by clever women in the past’ The Times
Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its 1,000-year history, the world’s most famous university has admitted female students. Giddy with dreams of equality, education and emancipation, four young women move into neighbouring rooms on Corridor Eight and find themselves thrust into an unlikely, life-affirming friendship. They have come here from all walks of life, but Dora, Beatrice, Otto and Marianne all long to move on from the Great War, whose ghosts, grief, and secrets still feel very real indeed.
But Oxford is a place caught between tradition and change, where centuries of misogyny and exclusion clash with the promise of new freedoms. And as the group navigate this tumultuous moment in time under the city’s dreaming spires, their friendship will become more important than ever.
The Eights is a captivating debut novel about sisterhood, self-determination, courage, and what it means to come of age in a world that is forever changed.
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‘A beautifully wrought story of women’s rights, freedom, love and experience. I couldn’t put it down’ HARRIET EVANS
‘I became completely involved in the lives of the four pioneering heroines whose friendship is the beating heart of the book’ CLARE CHAMBERS
Genre: Historical
‘I ADORED it. What a fantastic read. My book of the year’ JILL MANSELL
-
They knew they were changing history.
They didn’t know they would change each other.
‘Beautifully captures the power of friendship and love in the wake of extraordinary loss. It was a pleasure to read’ Pip Williams, author of The Dictionary of Lost Words
‘Sparkling … An inspiring reminder of the trail blazed by clever women in the past’ The Times
Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its 1,000-year history, the world’s most famous university has admitted female students. Giddy with dreams of equality, education and emancipation, four young women move into neighbouring rooms on Corridor Eight and find themselves thrust into an unlikely, life-affirming friendship. They have come here from all walks of life, but Dora, Beatrice, Otto and Marianne all long to move on from the Great War, whose ghosts, grief, and secrets still feel very real indeed.
But Oxford is a place caught between tradition and change, where centuries of misogyny and exclusion clash with the promise of new freedoms. And as the group navigate this tumultuous moment in time under the city’s dreaming spires, their friendship will become more important than ever.
The Eights is a captivating debut novel about sisterhood, self-determination, courage, and what it means to come of age in a world that is forever changed.
-
‘A beautifully wrought story of women’s rights, freedom, love and experience. I couldn’t put it down’ HARRIET EVANS
‘I became completely involved in the lives of the four pioneering heroines whose friendship is the beating heart of the book’ CLARE CHAMBERS
Genre: Historical
Praise for this book
"I so enjoyed The Eights and became completely involved in the lives of the four pioneering heroines whose friendship is the beating heart of the book." - Clare Chambers
"The Eights is an entertaining and moving imagining of four smart women dealing with the engrained misogyny of the time. I came to love these four women as though they were my sisters." - Tracy Chevalier
"My book of the year. The writing is wonderful, the subject fascinating and the storylines utterly absorbing. I'm so sad I've finished it. I loved everything about this book. I ADORED it." - Jill Mansell
"A heartfelt, thoughtful and engaging book about the first women students to go to Oxford University - their friendships, their secrets, their ambitions and their opponents - in the tremulous, haunted years immediately after the First World War. Joanna Miller brings 1920s Oxford to life with a vivid immediacy and makes us care deeply about four young women who find themselves pioneers in a strange new world, trying to find a way forward in the aftermath of war. A thoroughly lovely debut that will win many hearts, with its celebration of friendship and the persistence of hope." - Joanna Quinn
"I fell in love with this book from the first chapter... A vivid portrait of young women finding their way in a man's world under the long shadow of the Great War. It's dripping with historical detail...The true strength of this novel is the realisation of how powerful female solidarity can be. A joyous anthem to friendship, it made me want to pick up the phone to my best girlfriends." - Kate Thompson
"A story about women taking their place in a man's world, The Eights beautifully captures the power of friendship and love in the wake of extraordinary loss. It was a pleasure to read." - Pip Williams
"The Eights is an entertaining and moving imagining of four smart women dealing with the engrained misogyny of the time. I came to love these four women as though they were my sisters." - Tracy Chevalier
"My book of the year. The writing is wonderful, the subject fascinating and the storylines utterly absorbing. I'm so sad I've finished it. I loved everything about this book. I ADORED it." - Jill Mansell
"A heartfelt, thoughtful and engaging book about the first women students to go to Oxford University - their friendships, their secrets, their ambitions and their opponents - in the tremulous, haunted years immediately after the First World War. Joanna Miller brings 1920s Oxford to life with a vivid immediacy and makes us care deeply about four young women who find themselves pioneers in a strange new world, trying to find a way forward in the aftermath of war. A thoroughly lovely debut that will win many hearts, with its celebration of friendship and the persistence of hope." - Joanna Quinn
"I fell in love with this book from the first chapter... A vivid portrait of young women finding their way in a man's world under the long shadow of the Great War. It's dripping with historical detail...The true strength of this novel is the realisation of how powerful female solidarity can be. A joyous anthem to friendship, it made me want to pick up the phone to my best girlfriends." - Kate Thompson
"A story about women taking their place in a man's world, The Eights beautifully captures the power of friendship and love in the wake of extraordinary loss. It was a pleasure to read." - Pip Williams
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