‘The feelings are more autobiographical than the setting’: Aria Aber on her novel ‘Good Girl’

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. Raised speaking Farsi and German, she writes in her third language, English.

Her debut novel, Good Girl , published earlier this year, was shortlisted for the 2025 Women’s Prize in Fiction. The jury called it “an emotive, psychedelic novel whose writing is both poetic and politically powerful. Set in Berlin’s artistic underground and nightclub scene, it follows Nila, a young woman born to Afghan parents, as she comes to terms with her identity against a backdrop of anti-Muslim terrorism. It’s beautifully written, disarmingly so – I’ve never read sentences quite like this.”

The novel follows 19-year-old Nila