Guest Lecture: Aria Aber
Our most global Lit Girl yet / Unser bisher globalstes Lit Girl.
Sitting at the Ace Hotel in Brooklyn with Aria Aber, it’s very clear that she could just as easily get the nod of approval from the bouncers at Berghain as she could translate her incredible debut novel Good Girl into a second language. There’s no doubt about it: the woman is cool. She let us pick her brain about all things translation, identity, and poetry. Grab your vape - it’s a good one.
LG: Something that has always fascinated me about translation is the relationship between the author and the translator as well as the one between the translator and the text. Until about two years ago I had thought translation to be a tedious but straightforward process of literally just translating each and every word to replicate the book in another language, but it’s obviously a lot more nuanced than that. Can you talk about the relationship you had with writing the initial work versus the one you had with the translated version?
AA: So obviously, I wrote the book in English first. But one fun tidbit is that I wrote two of the chapters in German - when Nila and her friends go to this festival towards the end. Because I was doing a lot of research on that particular festival, which I fictionalized in the book. I ended up on a lot of German websites, and I talked to some of my friends who had been going to the festival more recently, and something in my brain switched to the German language, and I suddenly had to write them in German. So I translated them into English for the original, and then didn't look at the original source again and translated it back into German when I did the translation, which is funny, but it felt right. I didn't want to go back to the original. I hate looking at my drafts anyway. But I have to say that the translation of my own book was the hardest thing I have ever done. It was much harder than writing the book itself, because obviously, I grew up in Germany and it's my default language, and the language I'm most comfortable in, the only language I don't have an accent in. So bringing that across into this very intimate linguistic space felt so emotionally taxing. I had not expected it to be that complicated internally.
LG: Were there any moments you weren’t able to find a good translation for?
AA: Yeah, there were actually quite a few because I was so set on translating the musicality of the original, and you can't really replicate the same in German syntax because German is just a more complicated language and also, as you know, it sounds more tedious and clunky. And there are certain moments in the original text where I didn't use pronouns. (I have this fragmentary language.) And I had tried to do the same in German, and then my German editor corrected all of them and said, you can't do that. German is not colloquially enough in the same way. And it's not correct in English either. So I had to sacrifice some of the sonic quality for the translation.
LG: And do you think it’s harder because it is your own work?
AA: Absolutely. I think because I'm so precious about it. And also I didn't have enough time to take a break from the material and had to spend so much time with the book in English, and then immediately went into the translation, so it all felt very fresh. I think if I had had more distance, maybe it would have been easier.
LG: Did you always know you were going to translate it back yourself?
AA: No. I mean, I had dreamt of doing it but when we got a German publisher that wasn't the original idea. It only happened, or it was floated as a suggestion when I went to Germany and I met my German publisher and the editors, and they were like, “Oh, okay, so you're fluent in German - do you want to do your own translation?” And I said, Hell, yeah. Yeah, because I had always admired Beckett and Nabokov who have done self-translation. And there are a couple of other writers, I think, in a more contemporary landscape who also do it. I didn't envision it to be so hard, and I don't think I will do it again.
LG: That was my next question!
AA: Haha - yeah, I don’t think I will do it again.
LG: Would you ever translate someone else’s work?
AA: Yes, absolutely. I have translated German poetry into English before, and one of my Ceylan translations is in a Penguin anthology on spiritual poetry. I love translating other people's work, especially poetry, but with my own work I would trust other people. I think there is a reason why there are professionals for it.
LG: Would you ever consider writing an entire novel in German?
AA: Yes, maybe in the future. Right now, I still feel more comfortable writing in English because I've made my career in the English language. I don't know. I find it just so fun to experiment and be more loose. I think I'm a less lush writer in German and a little more serious, but also funnier. And I don't know what my style would be or what my voice would be if I wrote in German.
LG: You're also a poet! Do you ever find yourself trying to articulate something in one language that seems impossible to do in another?
AA: One-hundred percent. I experience it all the time, actually. And for a few years, I had taught myself how to think in English. I was even dreaming in English. And then with the translation, it kind of switched back to thinking more in German. And then I just spent a whole month in Germany touring for the book where I had to talk about the book in German and my brain is in German again. So I have trouble occasionally right now, and sometimes I have to look up words when I'm writing an email or drafting for my next project.
LG: Remind me, is German your first language?
AA: My first language is Persian - Farsi - but I learned German when I was three years old and then I mainly spoke German growing up.
LG: Do you think the book is received differently in Germany versus America?
AA: I love this question. It’s so fascinating to me because I also was wondering about that beforehand, but I think it's being received pretty similarly. And the [interview] questions are also often quite similar, except for questions concerning the political backdrop, especially the NSU violence, because when it comes to that, obviously, Germans are more aware of it. They know a little bit more about it and are curious about why I chose to fictionalize some parts of it. So some of their questions regarding that are more detailed, but otherwise, it's being received pretty similarly.
LG: I guess that speaks to the translation though. If the questions are the same then the end goal must have been achieved in both countries.
AA: That’s so true, I hadn’t even thought about that yet.
LG: Your translations must ring pretty true to each other.
AA: One thing that is interesting is that in Germany, the party novel - the Berghain novel - is kind of a trope, but I think by now it's also a trope in English language literature, the expat novel, like someone going to Berlin and using themselves in the party scene.
LG: Did you revisit any of your old spots when writing?
AA: I didn't go back to Berghain. I haven't been since 2015, but I started writing the novel in 2020, and at that time, I lived in Berlin again in a little apartment in Friedrichshain, which ended up being the inspiration for Marlowe's apartment because I was there. I would take these really long walks every day because it was a pandemic and you couldn't do anything else. I would always pass Berghain. A lot of memories from my own party girl phase were just flooding my consciousness. I think that I revisited the landscape without actually partaking in the experience.
LG: Okay, let’s get more into the book. Nila navigates a lot of different identities and spaces and does a lot of code switching. Do you think this is an innocent practice or one that can become harmful over time?
AA: A lot of people grow up having to code switch and to adapt to different rooms, especially if they grow up in a different culture. But even if you are part of the majority culture, I think you are representing a different form of yourself in a work setting as opposed to at home when you're on the couch. So I think partly it's very natural. But the way Nila internalizes having to wear a mask at all times is not harmless. It is harmful, I think. And I think in part it is due to the society she is in and the Islamophobia and the racism that she experiences. But in another way, it's also a kind of paranoia because she is more extreme in her shame than all the other people around her. When I was writing the novel, I asked myself the question, why does she lie? Where does the lie originate? Is the shame that she feels about her origins justified, or is it paranoid and exaggerated? I think the answer is in some ways both because it is a very racist landscape, especially at that time, and it could be dangerous to be that foreigner as exemplified by the murders.But, on the other hand, it was also completely exaggerated because when she reveals herself and has that moment of unmasking, there isn't actually that much of a repercussion. Her friends still love her and accept her.
LG: I think about it a lot, when she goes home, she's hiding a lot of that access of herself to her family, but then also hiding that to her friends.
AA: Yeah, there’s no place where she’s not wearing a mask, exactly.
LG: At no point are you really yourself if you can’t be yourself at home because you feel like you’re more your trust self to your friends, but, at the same time you’re not giving your friends the full picture of who you are.
AA: Exactly. It's like she's kind of torn between these two worlds, and she doesn't know who she is or which version is the true self. And of course, it's both. It's like she just has to be- it's somewhere in the middle. Yeah, exactly. It's somewhere in the middle. I intentionally chose the fact that there is no one that she tells the truth to, not at home, and also not in the party world or with her friends or whatever. Even though in my earliest draft, Nila had a brother who kind of knew about her double life, and obviously also knew that she was Afghan, so he was the only one who could see her. But I thought it would be more interesting to heighten her condition and to take the brother away. And also use photography as this medium of art where her self-portraits in front of the camera are the only place where she can be herself. And that's also why they're the most successful pieces of art she creates.
LG: Are there parts of her experience that you drew on from your own life?
AA: Yes. The party scene, because I spent a whole year of my life in Berlin going clubbing all the time. Some of the characters are partly inspired by people I know, composite sketches of very interesting friends that I had growing up and still have, even though they've changed a lot. Also the fact that she went to a path like all-girls school, even though I didn’t go to a boarding school, I went to a very strict, strange environment that is still haunting my dreams. I wanted to write a character who experiences that. But I didn't grow up in Berlin. I grew up in Münster, which is far away.
LG: Can you talk a little about Nila’s struggle to understand cultural identity and her attempts to self-discovery and the overlap that exists there?
AA: Yes. I think they're inextricably linked in some way because she doesn't get to the point of self-discovery until she accepts the community that she is from. Obviously, there are two climactic moments in the novel. It's like the taxi scene after she has taken off her mask in front of Marlowe after the breakdown in Venice, and then she sees her uncle, and he also sees her. That is like the world collapses around her. They see each other. Everything is breaking apart. Then the second one, I think, is towards the end when the neo-nazi violence is uncovered and that the bakery is burned and the violence hits very close to home for her, where she suddenly understands that she has to accept these people around her whom she had to refuse for so long and was ashamed of and experiences compassion and empathy for the men in her community who also experience shame. She thinks that she's being ostracized and repressed by the men in her community because of sexism and patriarchy, which is true. But what she doesn't understand is that the men in her community are being ashamed and ostracized by the German society at large, that they also can't express themselves fully.
LG: But I do think that’s genuine to how most people are. When you’re young, you think it’s all about you.
AA: It’s so solipsistic.
LG: It takes a somewhat dramatic experience sometimes to realize, oh it’s not just about me, this is bigger than me.
AA: And in real life, it might be less exaggerated of an experience. It might not have to be a terrorist attack in your hometown for you to realize that, but in the scope of a novel, you want to dramatize it.
LG: Pivoting for a moment. I think there is a lot of discussion about “messy girl” novels or these novels of complicated women/women indulging or being slothen (basically just partaking in any of the seven deadly sins). Sometimes called “weird girl” novels. Do you identify with these labels or reject them to any degree? Do you think there’s a reason people are suddenly so fascinated with “messy” women?
AA: That's such a good question. I don't really have an opinion about those labels. I don't reject them or identify with them. I love a lot of novels that fall under that category, so I guess I don't have a problem with being identified or having Good Girl identified with them. I thought about this for a while, and when it comes to the messy woman or complicated girl trope or whatever, I mean, that's nothing new. Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary - they were very messy women.
I think it's just life. It is just life. I think what is interesting about contemporary literature is the fact that now a lot of female writers are using first-person narrators in order to highlight these protagonists who are often also maybe unlikable on the surface and where there is no moral undercurrent in the book. I don't think Good Girl is that way because I am very political in the text, even though it's in the background. But ultimately, Nila is an incredibly messy person who you want to shake at all times and tell her to get out of the situations that she puts herself through.
LG: There were a few points where I was like, “I’m really worried for you, girl.”
AA: I mean, while I was writing it, there were a couple of moments where I thought, What is the worst thing she can do right now? Let me let her do that. Just to see where the roller coaster takes her. But I feel like I don't have a grand theory about it other than the fact that it represents something about how people really are and gives them permission to see themselves reflected in literature in a more heightened way than maybe in real life because you do read and consume culture in order to escape something.
LG: What was it like to make the jump from writing poetry to fiction?
AA: I guess I had always wanted to write a novel, and I had been writing screenplays and stuff even before I started writing poetry, so narrative wasn't that alien to me. But it was really hard to just sustain a book for that many words, because ultimately, a poetry collection can be like nine thousand thousand words, and a novel is 90,000. The world building was hard, but I lie in my poems all the time. I feel like the emotional truth is there, but I make up settings and people and dialog. I think I am more narrative or novelistic in my writing process all the time.
LG: Do you feel like the moment when you know a book is done or that a poem is done, do they feel the same?
AA: That is such a good question. I actually don't know because I only wrote one novel so far, and I've written so many poems. I don't know. I guess, yes. Maybe it boils down to an element of surprise, and me as the author, having learned something that I didn't know before from the act of writing or from what the characters are doing. I think at that point, I know it's done. But with the novel, I needed help from my agent and editor. It was a much more collaborative process than writing poetry, which nobody ever edits.
We barely edited this conversation, tbh. How can you narrow down such a fantastic conversation? If you haven’t already – grab a copy of Good Girl.