At a glance
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.
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.
Don’t just take
our word for it
"Once in a blue moon a debut novel comes along, announcing a voice quite unlike any other, with a layered story and sentences that crackle and pop, begging to be read aloud. Aria Aber’s splendid Good Girl introduces just such a voice… Aber, an award-winning poet, strikes gold here, much like Kaveh Akbar did in last year’s acclaimed Martyr!"
- Los Angeles Times
"[An] exhilarating debut novel… Aber’s first book was a collection of poetry [Hard Damage]; she 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… While reading Good Girl, I thought of James Baldwin, writing in a letter that ‘the place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.’ With her novel, Aber has made the world more spacious: More people will find a place to fit."
- R. O. Kwon, The New York Times Book Review
"Aria Aber is a poet who veers into that specifically ambiguous territory of ‘famous poet’, but even if you haven’t yet heard of her, you’re going to know her from her fiction debut, Good Girl… I love reading a poet’s fiction: every line is intentional and purposeful, gleaming with sharp, incisive meaning, while taking you on the journey of their narrator’s life, and this one is no different. One gets to have it all in such a case: at the line level, the plot level, and the novel as a whole, it’s a marvel."
- Literary Hub
