Nirvana Is Here

by Aaron Hamburger

A chance encounter in a flea market parking lot and a severed finger embroil two Vietnamese German siblings — and a vividly drawn cast of eccentric neighbors, a tough teen biker with a crush, a rollerblading girl gang, and many others — on a mission to save a desperate young Vietnamese woman from her pursuer. Two German siblings, 12-year-old Tâm and 14-year-old Dennis Nguyen, encounter a young Vietnamese woman in trouble in a flea market parking lot. When Tâm's spy movie-obsessed schoolmate, Alex, discovers an abandoned backpack with a photo of a happy couple with Tâm's address on the back, it will lead the two to discover a severed finger. Worried, Tâm searches for the desperate woman, aided by her reluctant brother, and eventually finds Hoa Bin, who escaped from her kidnapper — who's still tracking her down. Drawn to Hoa Bin, Tâm vows to save her — even if she has to break her stern-but-loving mom's rules, dodge the bad guys in wild chases through the Berlin streets, and combine the forces of Marina, the Nguyens' tough-chick neighbor, Jutta, an elderly retired actress, a rollerblading girl gang, and many others to do so. In Ross's empathetic, loose-but-controlled lines, cartoonishly expressive kids interact against and within the realistically depicted urban environments, given texture and grit by screen-tones. Nirvana Is Here is a contemporary crime thriller that has adventure, diasporic, coming-of-age, and love story elements, set in Berlin's working-class Lichtenberg district against a backdrop of very current social issues.

Unknown Binding

About the author

Aaron Hamburger is the author of the novel Nirvana Is Here, a story collection titled The View From Stalin's Head, which was awarded the Rome Prize by the American Academy of Arts and Letters and nominated for a Violet Quill Award, and a novel titled Faith For Beginners, nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. His latest novel is Hotel Cuba. In 2023, he was awarded the Jim Duggins PhD Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize by Lambda Literary.

His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Village Voice, Tin House, Michigan Quarterly Review, Subtropics, Crazyhorse, Boulevard, Poets and Writers, Tablet, Out, Nerve, Time Out, Details, and The Forward. In addition, he has also won fellowships from Yaddo, Djerassi, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the Edward F. Albee Foundation as well as first prize in the Dornstein Contest for Young Jewish Writers.

He has taught creative writing at Columbia University, the George Washington University, New York University, Brooklyn College, and the Stonecoast MFA Program.

Aaron enjoys talking with readers - to chat, find him now on Skolay: skolay.com/writers/aaron-hamburger