An electric debut novel about the daughter of Afghan refugees and her year of self-discovery—“a stunning coming-of-age story” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) and a portrait of the artist as a young woman set in a Berlin that can’t escape its history
A girl can get in almost anywhere, even if she can’t get out.
“A no-bullsh*t, must-read debut.”—Kaveh Akbar “Kaleidoscopic, full of style and soul.”—Raven Leilani “I loved this book.”—Leslie Jamison
In Berlin’s artistic underground, where techno and drugs fill warehouses still pockmarked from the wars of the twentieth century, nineteen-year-old Nila at last finds her tribe. Born in Germany to Afghan parents, raised in public housing graffitied with swastikas, drawn to philosophy, photography, and sex, Nila has spent her adolescence disappointing her family while searching for her voice as a young woman and artist.
Then in the haze of Berlin’s legendary nightlife, Nila meets Marlowe, an American writer whose fading literary celebrity opens her eyes to a life of personal and artistic freedom. But as Nila finds herself pulled further into Marlowe’s controlling orbit, ugly, barely submerged racial tensions begin to roil Germany—and Nila’s family and community. After a year of running from her future, Nila stops to ask herself the most important question: Who does she want to be?
A story of love and family, raves and Kafka, staying up all night and surviving the mistakes of youth, Good Girl is the virtuosic debut novel by a celebrated young poet and, now, a major new voice in fiction.
“A stunning coming-of-age story . . . a remarkable achievement.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“I disappeared into the many overlapping and colliding worlds of this book and emerged with a glistening, vibrating, beautifully exhausted heart. . . . I loved this book.”—Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters
“Aber’s ear is so remarkably good you hardly even notice she’s building this great symphony of textures, mosaics within mosaics.”—Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!
“Rarely have the wildness and bewilderment of youth been conveyed with such richly textured heat.”—Garth Greenwell, author of Small Rain
“Good Girl charts with more precision and poetry than any novel I know the heavy inheritance that children of immigrants carry. It is stunning, suspenseful, boldly defiant, and masterfully crafted; I only put this novel down to marvel at its prose.”—Fatima Farheen Mirza, author of A Place for Us
“In Good Girl, pleasure is textured, surprising, and treated with utter seriousness.”—Raven Leilani, author of Luster
“Aria Aber’s debut is a novel to be transported and moved by, full as it is of many charms, from its jeweled prose to its evocations of history-haunted Berlin to its portrait of a young Muslim artist finding her way.”—Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of All This Could Be Different
“A haunting exploration of identity and desire, and a testament to Aber’s immense storytelling talent, ensuring Good Girl remains as remarkable and timeless as the very nature of fiction itself.”—Morgan Talty, author of Fire Exit
“A heartbreaking song of youth and desire and violence and history and the unbearable solitude of displacement.”—Jamil Jan Kochai, author of The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories
“She explores the intergenerational sting of what it means to be a ‘good girl’ culturally, sexually, and socially. Her masterful prose guides the reader down the back alleys of Berlin, inviting the reader into a world all of her own making.”—Marlowe Granados, filmmaker and author of Happy Hour
Aria Aber was born and raised in Germany and now lives in the United States. Her debut poetry collection, Hard Damage, won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize and the Whiting Award. She is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford and graduate student at USC, and her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, New Republic, The Yale Review, Granta, and elsewhere. Raised speaking Farsi and German, she writes in her third language, English. She recently joined the faculty of the University of Vermont as an assistant professor of Creative Writing and divides her time between Vermont and Brooklyn.
View titles by Aria Aber
An electric debut novel about the daughter of Afghan refugees and her year of self-discovery—“a stunning coming-of-age story” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) and a portrait of the artist as a young woman set in a Berlin that can’t escape its history
A girl can get in almost anywhere, even if she can’t get out.
“A no-bullsh*t, must-read debut.”—Kaveh Akbar “Kaleidoscopic, full of style and soul.”—Raven Leilani “I loved this book.”—Leslie Jamison
In Berlin’s artistic underground, where techno and drugs fill warehouses still pockmarked from the wars of the twentieth century, nineteen-year-old Nila at last finds her tribe. Born in Germany to Afghan parents, raised in public housing graffitied with swastikas, drawn to philosophy, photography, and sex, Nila has spent her adolescence disappointing her family while searching for her voice as a young woman and artist.
Then in the haze of Berlin’s legendary nightlife, Nila meets Marlowe, an American writer whose fading literary celebrity opens her eyes to a life of personal and artistic freedom. But as Nila finds herself pulled further into Marlowe’s controlling orbit, ugly, barely submerged racial tensions begin to roil Germany—and Nila’s family and community. After a year of running from her future, Nila stops to ask herself the most important question: Who does she want to be?
A story of love and family, raves and Kafka, staying up all night and surviving the mistakes of youth, Good Girl is the virtuosic debut novel by a celebrated young poet and, now, a major new voice in fiction.
Praise
“A stunning coming-of-age story . . . a remarkable achievement.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“I disappeared into the many overlapping and colliding worlds of this book and emerged with a glistening, vibrating, beautifully exhausted heart. . . . I loved this book.”—Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters
“Aber’s ear is so remarkably good you hardly even notice she’s building this great symphony of textures, mosaics within mosaics.”—Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!
“Rarely have the wildness and bewilderment of youth been conveyed with such richly textured heat.”—Garth Greenwell, author of Small Rain
“Good Girl charts with more precision and poetry than any novel I know the heavy inheritance that children of immigrants carry. It is stunning, suspenseful, boldly defiant, and masterfully crafted; I only put this novel down to marvel at its prose.”—Fatima Farheen Mirza, author of A Place for Us
“In Good Girl, pleasure is textured, surprising, and treated with utter seriousness.”—Raven Leilani, author of Luster
“Aria Aber’s debut is a novel to be transported and moved by, full as it is of many charms, from its jeweled prose to its evocations of history-haunted Berlin to its portrait of a young Muslim artist finding her way.”—Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of All This Could Be Different
“A haunting exploration of identity and desire, and a testament to Aber’s immense storytelling talent, ensuring Good Girl remains as remarkable and timeless as the very nature of fiction itself.”—Morgan Talty, author of Fire Exit
“A heartbreaking song of youth and desire and violence and history and the unbearable solitude of displacement.”—Jamil Jan Kochai, author of The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories
“She explores the intergenerational sting of what it means to be a ‘good girl’ culturally, sexually, and socially. Her masterful prose guides the reader down the back alleys of Berlin, inviting the reader into a world all of her own making.”—Marlowe Granados, filmmaker and author of Happy Hour
Author
Aria Aber was born and raised in Germany and now lives in the United States. Her debut poetry collection, Hard Damage, won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize and the Whiting Award. She is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford and graduate student at USC, and her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, New Republic, The Yale Review, Granta, and elsewhere. Raised speaking Farsi and German, she writes in her third language, English. She recently joined the faculty of the University of Vermont as an assistant professor of Creative Writing and divides her time between Vermont and Brooklyn.
View titles by Aria Aber
