Aria Aber Selected Works

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

In lyric and documentary poems and essayistic fragments, Hard Damage explores the historical and personal implications of Afghan American relations. Drawing on material dating back to the 1950s, Aber considers the consequences of these relations—in particular the funding of the Afghan mujahedeen, which led to the Taliban and modern-day Islamic terrorism—for her family and the world at large.