Good Girl

BOOK SUMMARY

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?

ABOUT THE 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, The Yale Review, Granta, and elsewhere. Raised speaking Farsi and German, she writes in her third language, English. An assistant professor of Creative Writing at the University of Vermont, Aber divides her time between Vermont and Brooklyn.

PRAISE

"An exhilarating debut novel . . . Aber has published astonishing poems I've read dozens of times. It's thrilling to see her turn major poetic gifts toward the sweep of this Künstlerroman." — R. O. Kwon, The New York Times Book Review

"Open Good Girl to any page and you'll be immediately arrested by the haunting beauty of her work and the way desire pushes against the seams of despair." — Ron Charles, The Washington Post

"Breathtaking . . . a must-read about the complexities of Afghan sexuality, family, shame, poverty and power." — The Guardian

PRODUCT INFORMATION

Trade paperback 368 pages
Fiction / literary
Dimensions: 8 in (H) | 5.2 in (W) | 0.8 in (T) | 0.6 lb