Nila is a 19-year-old woman living with her father in Berlin. Her mother, once a feminist revolutionary, died a few years earlier. Nila’s parents emigrated from Afghanistan before Nila was born, and Nila and her dad now live in a run down block of flats. A woman who owns seven ferrets lives on one side of them; some neo-Nazis on the other. Nila has set her sights on becoming a photographer and consequently mixes with an arty, bo-ho set. Her Berlin, where it always seems to be snowing, resembles Bowie’s Berlin with everyone chatting about Kafka. The soundtrack is resolutely electronic. To that end, Nila spends much of her time in pounding techno clubs during weekend long benders, and drugs are bandied about like sweets. One day she meets an older man in a club, 30-something Marlowe Woods who is something of a literary celebrity, although his fame rests on his first book, which came out a while ago. The pair start a relationship, which Nila hides from her father who wants her to be a dokhtare khub, a good girl, in order not to turn into a dokhtare kharab, a broken, bad, ruined girl. (Nila prefers to keep her Afghan heritage to herself, instead telling everyone she is Greek – figuring it would be easier.) Aria Aber’s debut novel – which gives us a rounded portrait of a young woman trying to find her place in the world – electrifyingly evokes Berlin’s nightlife scene, but it also asks the question: does relentless partying represent the freedom Nila craves? RM

Published by Bloomsbury