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2026 Nominated

Good Girl

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ABOUT
THE BOOK

In Berlin’s underground, where techno and drugs fill warehouses still pockmarked from the wars of the twentieth century, nineteen-year-old Nila finds her tribe. Born in Germany to Afghan parents, Nila has spent her adolescence disappointing her family while searching for her voice as a young woman and artist.

Then Nila meets American writer Marlowe. As she finds herself pulled into his seductive but controlling orbit, ugly racial tensions begin to roil through 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

Aria Aber was born and raised in Germany. Her debut poetry collection Hard Damage won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry and a 2020 Whiting Award, and her work has appeared in the New Yorker and New Republic. She holds awards and fellowships from Kundiman, the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing, and the Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. Good Girl is her first novel and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2025.

Aria Aber was born and raised in Germany. Her debut poetry collection Hard Damage won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry and a 2020 Whiting Award, and her work has appeared in the New Yorker and New Republic. She holds awards and fellowships from Kundiman, the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing, and the Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. Good Girl is her first novel and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2025.

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NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

Good Girl is the dark and intoxicating debut novel by award winning poet Aria Aber. A coming-of-age story unlike any other, Good Girl follows the life of Nila, a 19-year-old Afgan philosophy student as she navigates the haphazard haze of Berlin’s legendary nightlife. Underpinning her lyrical prose is a visceral pseudo autobiographical novel that reflects on a young woman’s struggles with sex, shame, family, beauty and power. (Cleveland Public Library)

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Date published
14/01/2025
Country
Afghanistan, Germany
Author
Publisher
Bloomsbury
Borrow this book from Libraries Ireland

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