Mariam Rahmani

Spikily funny . . . Her prose is varnished with sarky asides on dating, race and class in ways that bring to mind a modern day Jane Austen.

Playful, sexy and oppressively sunny. Mariam Rahmani has written a very L.A. novel . . . She is sharp, clear-eyed and always so fashionable. Mariam brings all that style, wit and brilliance to Liquid, a novel [driven] by a narrative voice that is at turns sardonic, hilarious and yearning. The premise — marry rich or die trying — is handled so intelligently and schematically . . . The structural bifurcation of the novel is a bold choice, and all the more rewarding for its boldness . . . Liquid is a book troubling the fault lines.

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.

Paul Beatty, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sellout

Liquid is sleek, gimlet-eyed, stylish and doubtless smarter than the average reader — myself. But it is ever prescient and often very witty about the fate of love among thirty-somethings — indeed, among us all — as we enter the brave new world ahead.

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.

Jenny Xie, author of the National Book Award Finalists The Rupture Tense and Eye Level

Loving, cutting, mournful, and hilarious . . . 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.

Bryan Washington award-winning author of Family Meal and Memorial

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.

Heidi Julavits, author of Directions to Myself and The Vanishers

Written with a sharp eye and warm heart, Liquid traverses a fascinating woman's circuitous route to self-discovery . . . It literally took my breath away.

Binnie Kirshenbaum, author of Rabbits for Food

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.

Justin Torres, National Book Award-winning author of Blackouts and We the Animals

Provocative, intelligent and bold, Liquid is a novel that lingers. Rahmani’s ability to access humour at the perfect moment, and her keen understanding of the power and perils of vulnerability make her the best kind of observer — an honest one.

Angela Flournoy, author of the National Book Award Finalist The Turner House

Heady and intellectual yet sexy and deeply felt in its explorations of loss, identity, and relationships, this is fiction that brings theory into practice in a romantic comedy of sorts that will leave readers thinking about much more than Jane Austen’s truth universal.

Incisive . . . a whirlwind homage to the classic 'ridiculous first date' trope . . . sharp cultural criticism, particularly on dating and adulthood. Fans of Elif Batuman ought to take note.

Rahmani's debut novel joins a canon of what I've called the millennial midlife crisis novel . . . Though unsparing and wry like its bedfellows, Liquid is also pleasingly buoyant . . . Rahmani's romance invokes Jane Austen arithmetic.

Erudite . . . Rahmani's debut novel is a sharply observed, cleverly composed examination of modern love.

An Iranian Indian American adjunct studying marriage plots and seeking middle-class comfort (permanent health care) makes a strategic plan to marry rich in Mariam Rahmani’s smart, addictive debut novel.

This one’s for the Elif Batuman heads, but make it post-doc . . . Rahmani’s highbrow humor will draw you in, but make sure you stay for the back half — a poetic and yearning contemplation of Iran, belonging, family, and love that is both as enlightening as it is genuinely rare. Buy.

Bitterly funny . . . [a] stylishly arch literary debut.

A wry, mercurial book about the horrors of being ‘on the market,’ both in romance and in academe . . . . Profound, unanswerable questions — about the academy’s relentless mistreatment of its workers, the mortifications of compulsory heterosexuality and the emotional inheritances we receive from our parents — glitter at the edges of certain passages like shards of glass.

In Liquid, cynical humour pairs with personal turmoil to make for a head-spinning ride through dating apps, academia, and the contours of Iranian American identity.

Mariam Rahmani’s debut novel is both charmingly familiar and totally unpredictable, [with] the crispy edges of the most satisfying rom-com . . . Rahmani is in many ways reinventing the Iranian American novel . . . Electrically alive [and] winkingly self-aware.

Justin Torres remarked that Rahmani’s debut novel, Liquid, was the buzziest book of the season. Given her effervescent, incisive prose and the plot’s playful yet profound twist on the romantic comedy genre, it’s easy to understand why.

An unnamed ex-academic decides to marry rich to escape the grim university job market and her lackluster love life. She makes a spreadsheet and tracks her dates, while navigating life in LA and Tehran, her Iranian Indian heritage and a close will-they-won't-they friendship. The novel is stylish and quick-witted, and it blends heady theory – about love, capitalism, immigration, sex and death – with the brass tacks of parties, hookups, post-9/11 surveillance in the U.S., health care in Iran and more.

The writing in this book is so good that it often feels ethereal in nature. I honestly felt as though I was in LA and Tehran while reading Liquid, and the presentation of the protagonist's two cultures is so well written and relatable.

A most anticipated book of the season for Oprah Daily, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Book Riot, WBUR and LGBTQ Reads. 
 
'Sexy, sly, daring' Justin Torres, National Book Award-winning author of Blackouts 
 
'The smoothest, smartest book I’ve read in quite some time' Paul Beatty, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sellout 
 
'Loving, cutting, mournful, and hilarious' Bryan Washington award-winning author of Family Meal and Memorial 
 
 
‘My career had gone nowhere. My love life was non-existent. And as for s*x – here I was, home alone on a Saturday night with a chick flick playing on my laptop because I didn’t own a TV. You can draw your own conclusions.’ 
 
Our protagonist always believed herself to be the smartest person in the room. But a couple of years on from earning a fancy PhD, she’s still broke, single and stuck in a job going nowhere. One option remains: marry rich. 
 
Her summer becomes a whirlwind of dating: martinis with a lazy heir, board games with a butch producer and a Venmo request from a ‘socialist’ trust-fund babe. However, when some unexpected and tragic news takes her – and her project – to Tehran she is forced to ask and answer some overdue questions about family, connection and, terrifyingly, her own purpose in life and in love. 
 
A riveting spin on a classic romantic comedy, Liquid delivers a modern tale of romance, loss and belonging in a gorgeous high-wire voice that explodes off the page with wit, verve and originality.

Mariam Rahmani

Praise for Liquid

Provocative and witty

Spikily funny . . . Her prose is varnished with sarky asides on dating, race and class in ways that bring to mind a modern day Jane Austen.

Playful, sexy and oppressively sunny. Mariam Rahmani has written a very L.A. novel . . . She is sharp, clear-eyed and always so fashionable. Mariam brings all that style, wit and brilliance to Li ...

Provocative and witty

Spikily funny . . . Her prose is varnished with sarky asides on dating, race and class in ways that bring to mind a modern day Jane Austen.

Playful, sexy and oppressively sunny. Mariam Rahmani has written a very L.A. novel . . . She is sharp, clear-eyed and always so fashionable. Mariam brings all that style, wit and brilliance to Li ...

Provocative and witty

Spikily funny . . . Her prose is varnished with sarky asides on dating, race and class in ways that bring to mind a modern day Jane Austen.

Playful, sexy and oppressively sunny. Mariam Rahmani has written a very L.A. novel . . . She is sharp, clear-eyed and always so fashionable. Mariam brings all that style, wit and brilliance to Li ...

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter