An electric debut novel about the daughter of Afghan refugees and her year of nightclubs, bad romance, and self-discoverya portrait of the artist as a young woman setin a Berlin that can’t escape its history

A girl can get in almost anywhere, even if she cant get out.

A no-bullsh*t, must-read debut.Kaveh Akbar
Kaleidoscopic . . . full of style and soul.Raven Leilani
Radiant with longing and beauty.Sarah Thankham Matthews

In Berlins 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 Berlins 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 Marlowes controlling orbit, ugly, barely submerged racial tensions begin to roil Germanyand Nilas 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 Girlis the virtuosic debut novel by a celebrated young poet and, now, a major new voice in fiction.

Aria Aber was born and raised in Germany and currently lives in Los Angeles. Her debut poetry collection,Hard Damage,won the Prairie Schooner Prize. She is a former Stegner Fellow and Whiting Award recipient, and her poems have appeared inThe New Yorker,New Republic,The Yale Review,Narrative, andPOETRY. She will join the faculty of the University of Vermont in September, 2024.

• Publisher:Hogarth Press
• Publish Date:January 14, 2025
• Pages:368
• Dimensions:1.25 pounds
• Language:English
• Type:Hardcover
• EAN/UPC: 9780593731116
• BISAC Categories: Literary, Coming of Age, Women