Good Girl

Nineteen-year-old Nila Haddadi is the Berlin-born daughter of Afghan refugees, drifting through the city's after-hours world of clubs, drugs, and art while she tries to figure out who she wants to be. Caught between the expectations of her grieving family and the freedom she finds in nightlife, she often hides her heritage, inventing a more glamorous European background for herself.

In the blur of one summer she meets Marlowe, an older American writer whose fading reputation and bohemian self-assurance pull her into his orbit. What begins as intoxicating mentorship and desire slowly curdles as his control tightens and his own addictions surface.

Around them, simmering racial tensions in Germany rise toward violence, forcing Nila to reckon with the ways prejudice has shaped her family, her friendships, and her sense of self. Moving between Berlin's squats and galleries and the quieter sorrow of her father's home, the novel traces a young woman's search for an artistic voice and a place to belong.

Written in sharp, image-rich prose, it is a coming-of-age story about shame, longing, and the difficult work of becoming honest about where you come from.