The Eights

2026 WATERSTONES PAPERBACK OF THE YEAR
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2026 RSL CHRISTOPHER BLAND PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 EAST ANGLIAN BOOK AWARD

‘Entertaining and moving…I came to love these four women as though they were my sisters’ TRACY CHEVALIER

'Heartfelt, thoughtful and engaging ... A thoroughly lovely debut that will win many hearts' JOANNA B QUINN, author of The Whalebone Theatre

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