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Now Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2025
At first, Aber's apparently autofictional debut seems to be a tale as old as time: Hedonistic Berlin party girl takes too much speed at legendary techno club , sleeps with toxic bois and seeks meaning, the end. If German literature is your home turf, this storyline is so overdone, it only works as parody - but Aber gives it a twist that keeps up the intrigue: Her narrator, 19-year-old Nila, was born to Afghan parents, and she drifts through to the once divided city shortly after 9/11, in deep grief after losing her mother. In an environment still unsettled by post-unification right-wing violence (in Germany called the baseball bar years) and the terror brought about by what we now know as the , she feels pressured by her father's expectations to be the title-giving good Afghan girl, carrying the weight of her parents' destiny as refugees - former doctors, they now hardly get by in the infamous brutalist skyscrapers of (btw also where Christiane V. Felscherinow grew up).

Nila flees into Berlin nightlife (okay, that's really a cliche) and starts a relationship with a toxic boi (sure), but how Aber renders this dynamic is great. From the start, older American writer Marlowe aims to dominate Nila, and the naive young woman falls for his manipulative antics, but there also seems to be a wish inside the grieving daughter to be physically hurt, to be punished and demeaned for what is perceived as her flaws - perceived by the world, perceived by herself. And that's where the text is psychologically interesting: Nila battles all these issues, and she seeks relief in forms of self-destruction she believes she deserves. Her dream is to become an artist though, and Aber encourages readers to root for this volatile narrator who, as we know, deserves much better.

Sure, there are too many repetitive party scenes, and Aber's perspective is also slightly off, as we are supposed to believe that the story is told by an older Nila looking back - if that's the case, there are layers of reflection lacking, the disconnect between youthful naivete and later wisdom is not played out accordingly. Still, Nila's complexity is so fascinating, the contradictory impulses are shown so convincingly, that this debut is just a pleasure to read.