Mariam Rahmani is a writer and translator. Her recent novel Liquid has been shortlisted for the Center For Fiction First Novel Prize. Her translation from Farsi of Mahsa Mohebali's In Case of Emergency was a New Yorker Best Book of 2022, while her translation of Farzaneh Milani's biography of the midcentury poet Forugh Farrokhzad is forthcoming with Liveright fall 2026. Her work has appeared in Granta, New York Magazine, n+1, and elsewhere.

Named a Most Anticipated/Recommended Book of the Season by Oprah Daily, Vanity Fair, Literary Hub, WBUR, Electric Literature, Book Riot, LGBTQ Reads, RAWI, San Francisco Bay Times, Columbia Magazine, and more.

A Book of the Month Selection for March.

A Goodreads Editor's Pick for March.

"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. Mariam Rahmani includes the best details."--NPR: Books We Love

"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, subtly yet substantially. In books such as Kaveh Akbar's Martyr! and Sanam Mahloudji's The Persions--and even most of my own--Iran is a symbol of all that has been lost once one leaves the country behind. But in Rahmani's novel, the country is an actual setting for flesh-and-blood characters rather than a silent specter. Rahmani's universe is never quiet; everything is spoken, often exhaustively and exhaustingly, in writing so electrically alive that the reader feels fully immersed in her world."--Porochista Khakpour, The Atlantic

"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."--New York Times Book Review

"[A] smart, addictive debut novel."--Vanity Fair

"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."--The Cut, "Book Gossip" Newsletter

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

"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

"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 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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"Justin Torres remarked that Rahmani's debut novel, Liquid: A Love Story (Algonquin Books, 2025), 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."--BOMB Magazine

"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."--Publishers Weekly

"This rom-com infused with sharp literary prose muses on the ridiculous indignities of modern courtship, the nuances of Persian literature, and the thoughtful contrast between the narrator's despondent (yet hopeful) descent into American independence and her parents' hard-won career paths as Iranian and Indian immigrants."--WBUR (Boston NPR), "11 books by New England authors to prepare for 2025"

"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."--Literary Hub

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

"The book, which had already been exploring the immigrant-as-outsider experience, shifts in tone in [the] second half, as Rahmani explores what it's like for a character who is now slowly realizing she may not feel perfectly at home anywhere."--Orange County Register

"[Liquid] 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. Mariam Rahmani includes the best details. And the cover art is gorgeous."--Neena Pathak, senior editor, NPR.org