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Liquid
- Author
- Mariam Rahmani
- Narrator
- Mariam Rahmani
- Publisher
- Hachette Audio
- Publish Date
- 11 March 2025
- Run Time
- 9 hours 5 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
The unnamed Iranian-Indian American narrator of Liquid has always believed herself to be the smartest person in the room. And from an early age, she and her best friend—a poet-turned-marketer named Adam—have turned their noses up at other peoples’ riches. But two years after earning a PhD from UCLA, the narrator is no closer to the middle-class comfort promised to her by the prestige of her fancy, scholarship-funded education and the successes of her immigrant parents. Jokingly, Adam suggests she just "marry rich."
But our protagonist, whose PhD thesis compared Eastern and Western views of marriage in film and literature, takes the idea seriously. She makes a spreadsheet and outlines a goal: 100 dates with people of all genders and a marriage proposal in hand by the official start of the fall semester. What follows is a whirlwind summer packed with dating: martinis sans vermouth with the lazy scion of an Eastside construction empire; board games with a butch producer who owns a house in the hills and a newly dented Porsche; a Venmo request from a “socialist” trust fund babe; and an evening spent dodging the halitosis of a maxillofacial surgeon from Orange County.
Only a tragedy in Tehran and an overdue familial reckoning can alter the narrator’s increasingly manic trajectory and force her to confront the contradictions of her life in Los Angeles. And as doubts begin to creep in about her marriage project, it suddenly seems possible that the eligible prospect she’s been looking for has been beneath her nose the entire time.
For fans of Kaveh Akbar and Elif Batuman, Liquid delivers a modern tale of romance, loss, and belonging like no other. Mariam Rahmani’s gorgeous high-wire satire explodes off the page with verve and originality in this riveting spin on the classic romantic comedy.
Critics Review
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“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
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“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
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“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
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“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.”—Bryan Washington, award-winning author of Family Meal and Memorial
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"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
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"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."—Binnie Kirshenbaum, author of Rabbits for Food
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“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."
—Richard Ford -
“Provocative, intelligent and bold, Liquid is a novel that lingers. Rahmani’s ability to access humor 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 Turner House
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Details
- Author
- Mariam Rahmani
- Narrator
- Mariam Rahmani
- Duration
- 9 hours 5 minutes
- Release Date
- 11 March 2025
- ISBN
- 9781668646199
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Hachette Audio
- Genre
- Fiction: general and literary, Fiction: general and literary, Fiction: general and literary, Feminism and feminist theory, Family life fiction, Narrative theme: Love and relationships
Synopsis
In this brilliant debut novel, a young Muslim scholar stuck in the mire of adjunct professorship in Los Angeles decides to give up her career in academia and marry rich, committing herself to 100 dates in the course of a single summer. By midsummer reality hits, taking her—and her project—to Tehran.  Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize  The unnamed Iranian-Indian American narrator of Liquid has always believed herself to be the smartest person in the room. And from an early age, she and her best friend—a poet-turned-marketer named Adam—have turned their noses up at other peoples’ riches. But two years after earning a PhD from UCLA, the narrator is no closer to the middle-class comfort promised to her by the prestige of her fancy, scholarship-funded education and the successes of her immigrant parents. Jokingly, Adam suggests she just "marry rich." But our protagonist, whose PhD thesis compared Eastern and Western views of marriage in film and literature, takes the idea seriously. She makes a spreadsheet and outlines a goal: 100 dates with people of all genders and a marriage proposal in hand by the official start of the fall semester. What follows is a whirlwind summer packed with dating: martinis sans vermouth with the lazy scion of an Eastside construction empire; board games with a butch producer who owns a house in the hills and a newly dented Porsche; a Venmo request from a “socialist” trust fund babe; and an evening spent dodging the halitosis of a maxillofacial surgeon from Orange County. Only a tragedy in Tehran and an overdue familial reckoning can alter the narrator’s increasingly manic trajectory and force her to confront the contradictions of her life in Los Angeles. And as doubts begin to creep in about her marriage project, it suddenly seems possible that the eligible prospect she’s been looking for has been beneath her nose the entire time. For fans of Kaveh Akbar and Elif Batuman, Liquid delivers a modern tale of romance, loss, and belonging like no other. Mariam Rahmani’s gorgeous high-wire satire explodes off the page with verve and originality in this riveting spin on the classic romantic comedy.
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