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Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2025

A portrait of the artist as a young woman in a Berlin that can't escape its history: an electric debut novel about the daughter of Afghan refugees and her year of nightclubs, bad romance, and self-discovery

'Kaleidoscopic, full of style and soul' Raven Leilani
'A must-read . Dark, breathtaking, profound, so fresh' Guardian
'A no-bullshit must-read debut' Kaveh Akbar
'Delicious, propulsive reading' Vogue

Born in Germany to Afghan parents, Nila has spent her adolescence disappointing her family while searching for her voice. Now in Berlin's techno-filled warehouses, their walls still scarred by the ravages of the last century, she has found her tribe.

Then Nila meets American writer Marlowe. As she is sucked into his seductive but controlling orbit, and ugly racial tensions begin to roil through Germany, she is forced to ask herself the question she's been running from: who does she want to be?

'Rarely has the wildness and bewilderment of youth been conveyed with such richly textured heat' Garth Greenwell