Liquid

Praise for Liquid, A Love Story: 

“Hirsute, heuristic, and humorous, Liquid is an electric read. From Los Angeles to Tehran, past to present, academia to the bedsheets, Rahmani navigates these journeys with undeniable verve, serious street-smarts,  and a glowing charismatic cool. The smoothest, smartest book I’ve read in quite some time and the dawning of a literary force.”

“I love this book. After hilariously tearing through the faux-profundity of so many of our cultural fixations—from Los Angeles, to academia, to rom-coms—the novel moves to Tehran, and slowly morphs into a touching examination of vulnerability, dislocation, grief, and longing. Underneath the posturing and razor-sharp wit, we find the yearning heart and hard-won intelligence of a young woman who has found herself adrift. I couldn't stop thinking about Liquid—sexy, sly, daring, and utterly brilliant. Mariam Rahmani is the most exciting new writer I've read in ages.”

“Pleasures of nearly every variety abound in Mariam Rahmani’s astonishing Liquid, a novel whose force seeps into the bloodstream, dilating thinking on desire and ambition, of the relations that entangle and unmake us, alongside the traces of unknowability that sustain. Pages erupt with blazing intelligence, pathos, and stringent wit. How rare it is to encounter this marriage of sociological richness with a poet’s staggering feel for the capacity of language, its lush contours and bite. Traversing the streets of LA and Tehran with Rahmani at the wheel awakens sensations and appetites for which one has no name. Liquid is a potent, shimmering revelation, and Rahmani is a writer you proselytize for.”

“Liquid is an absolute lifeline—Mariam Rahmani's prose expands what's possible on the page, with a novel that's loving, cutting, mournful, and hilarious. Rahmani knows LA and Tehran. Rahmani knows sex, pleasure, and pain. Rahmani knows loss, and care, and the stickiness in-between. Liquid is a dream of a book—written with heart and feeling and longing and clarity, bracingly astute, elastic, and precise—an absolute delight expanding the possibilities in American fiction.”

"Brainy, swift, naughty, constantly surprising, and slyly political—a transgressive tour de force of cultural criticism, hidden inside a careening, and deftly comic, logic proof of love."

"Flailing in the disparate worlds of academia, Los Angeles, and Tehran, the complex and complicated protagonist of Mariam Rahmani's electrifying debut novel is struggling to find a job and a husband, both of which prove elusive. Written with a sharp eye and warm heart, Liquid traverses a fascinating woman's circuitous route to self-discovery. An eminently memorable novel worthy of all the praise and raves it will undoubtedly receive—it literally took my breath away."

Praise for Mariam Rahmani's translation of In Case of Emergency by Masha Mohebali:

“Sheekasteh is the Farsi expression for the kind of visceral, idiomatic slang that characterizes this book’s prose—nimbly translated here by the scholar Mariam Rahmani—but the word literally means ‘broken.’ The novel’s most compelling transgression may be linguistic, the tectonic shift it represents in Iranian letters.”
 

“Utterly shattering—I could hardly catch my breath… At turns hilarious and deeply unnerving, here is contemporary Tehran as never glimpsed before. Mariam Rahmani's pitch-perfect translation is intoxicatingly energetic, capturing all the poetry and pathos of disintegration. Read this now.”

“A brilliant and jarring portrait of contemporary Iran, rife with unrest, drugs, and destruction.”

“A macabre urban carnival of a novel. In Mariam Rahmani’s inspired, electric translation, Mahsa Mohebali’s portrait of the unmoored offspring of Tehran’s educated elite jolts the reader, offering a rare visceral glimpse into contemporary Iran.”

"Mariam Rahmani’s startling new translation of Mahsa Mohebali’s In Case of Emergency practically vibrates in the hand... Rahmani’s translation is brilliant—her language throughout dazzles and sears… Turns out I’d been waiting for [this book] my entire life."