Good Girl

This brilliant debut by Aber follows Nila, a young woman born in Germany to Afghan parents who has spent her adolescence disappointing her family. Now, against the backdrop of Berlin’s epic clubbing scene, Nila meets Marlowe, an American writer who opens her eyes to artistic freedom. A beautiful coming-of-age story about identity and self-discovery * ELLE, The Cult Books We Can’t Wait To Read In 2025 * A must-read … This powerful debut plunges the reader into a raging battle between a young Afghan woman’s cultural identity and desire for freedom … Dark, breathtaking, profound, so fresh … Nila shines in her wildness, in her yearning for beauty and freedom * GUARDIAN * Aber touches the heart of a young woman struggling to find herself in the heat of clashing cultures ... You’ll be immediately arrested by the haunting beauty of her work and the way desire pushes against the seams of despair * WASHINGTON POST * Impressive … At heart, the novel is about the allure of freedom and the estrangement from others that is the cost of both exile and artistic creation … Aber writes with the masterful precision of an archivist … Exile, migration, displacement: These will splinter even the most solid self. But out of the shards, it is possible to make art, as Nila finally realizes – and as Aber has done in this touching novel * THE ATLANTIC * Captures the ache of Muslim girlhood and the vertigo of never feeling quite at home ... Aber ingests the millennial playbook and spits out something that happens to be more interesting * VULTURE * An extraordinary debut … A truly masterful work of prose, Good Girl amplifies the voice of a young woman who dreams of leading the life of an artist * nb MAGAZINE * A book that deserves to be among 2025’s standouts; a novel which ought to be read far and wide * BUZZ * Reminiscent of An Education and On the Road, Good Girl is a highly engaging coming-of-age novel about a young artist * IRISH TIMES * This book made me feel alive * THE MILLIONS * Does beauty still exist the morning after? From the refugees of Kabul to the ravers of the underground scene, Aber denudes her characters until you are the one finally rubbing at your own face, wondering what will greet you if you tried to capture the picture * INTERVIEW * A compelling coming-of-age story * HARPERS BAZAAR * Vivid, shockingly moving ... She unwinds complex histories and legacies — of people, places and politics alike — with a deft touch * FINANCIAL TIMES * Aria Aber’s exciting debut novel finds the daughter of an Afghan refugee sidestepping disapproval and racism as she dives into Berlin’s nightworld ... With her novel, Aber has made the world more spacious: More people will find a place to fit * NEW YORK TIMES * A book of self-making and unmaking, of self-destruction and self-discovery ... A book coursing with desire and shame, flight and pursuit, Good Girl is ultimately about the desperate need to find oneself and one’s home, whatever the cost. Where home might not be a place or a people at all, but the world of art and literature itself * BETWEEN THE COVERS * If you haven’t yet heard of her, you’re going to know her ... 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 * 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 ... Gorgeously packed with epiphanies on literature and philosophy, a tale of seductive risks and the burdens of diaspora * LOS ANGELES TIMES * A novel of overwhelming and conflicted love - for persons, for histories, for artistic creation, for Berlin. Her poet’s eye makes a thermal map of emotional landscapes, lighting up passion, desire, desperate hope, and violence -- Garth Greenwell An expertly crafted, sprawling work, its prose alternately icily precise and drenched in emotion * LITERARY REVIEW * In Good Girl, pleasure is textured, surprising, and treated with utter seriousness. Aber’s prose is kaleidoscopic, full of style and soul -- Raven Leilani Aria Aber’s Good Girl dives heartfirst into one of the art’s great crises: that the great searing ecstasies of youth should form us before we have the psychospiritual maturity to articulate them. Usually writing this good is realized through a gauzy patina of recollection, but in Good Girl the bass beat is still full in your chest, the coke drip’s still a numbing bitter in your throat. Aber’s ear is so remarkably good you hardly even notice she’s building this great symphony of textures, mosaics within mosaics. Seldom has the scald of shame felt so vivid, so load-bearing, so eviscerating. Good Girl is a no-bullsh*t must-read debut -- Kaveh Akbar A haunting exploration of identity and desire. Nila's journey through historic and scintillating Berlin, marked by profound loneliness and a relentless pursuit of self-discovery, makes this novel both compelling and unforgettable. The book's poignant reflection on the urban experience is 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 Aber captures the seedy underside of what it means to be a party girl. 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 Aria Aber's Berlin roils, seethes and shimmers with complexity. She captures the dark history that lingers in the concrete, amid the joy and terror of youth. In sticky, electric prose, she explores family, race, reinvention, oblivion and the necessity of facing hard truths in order to own yourself, before you are swallowed by the limits the world places on you -- Jessica Andrews I disappeared into the many overlapping and colliding worlds of this book and emerged with a beautifully exhausted heart - newly alive to the complexities of love and family and becoming ourselves -- Leslie Jamison Charts with more precision and poetry than any novel I know the heavy inheritance that children of immigrants carry. Stunning, suspenseful, boldly defiant, and masterfully crafted ... I’m haunted by the painful truth at the centre of Good Girl: that the process of breaking free inevitably breaks the self -- Fatima Mirza At once euphoric and despairing, philosophical and poetic, Good Girl is a heartbreaking song of youth and desire and violence and history and the unbearable solitude of displacement -- Jamil Jan Kochai Praise for Aria Aber: She is her own poet, her own voice, and her debut is my favorite volume of poetry this year * Paris Review * At turns scathing and tender, ironic and keening ... There is too much barbed beauty for my few sentences to contain, though Aber’s do - elegantly; dangerously -- Solmaz Sharif I appreciate a book of poems where the speaker (and, by extension, the self) aren’t let off the hook by whatever other concerns the book is circling. But, even in that process, there’s a real generosity and warmth extended, balancing not only accountability to the always shifting world but also forgiveness * GQ * An origin story and the shattering of an origin story at once. It sets out with an impossible task: How does a voice fill the gap, the void, of life as a perpetual refugee? * The Rumpus * Prepare to be turned upside down as you listen in to this blazing intelligence that juggles languages and global conflict to erase boundaries and to question other erasures -- Catherine Barnett, author of Human Hours Revel in the rise of this searing, essential new voice .... Every word, every phrase crafted to incise, with its electric currents of images that make up the lives of refugee mothers, fathers, and daughters, and the inherent homesickness of language, wars. This debut seduces, critiques, mourns, ruptures, replenishes—and not without humor and wit -- Sally Wen Mao