The Coin (US hardcover edition)

A bold and unabashed novel about a young Palestinian woman's unraveling as she teaches at a New York City middle school, gets caught up in a scheme reselling Birkin bags, and strives to gain control over her body and mind.

The Coin's narrator is a wealthy Palestinian woman with impeccable style and meticulous hygiene. And yet the ideal self, the ideal life, remains just out of reach: her inheritance is inaccessible, her homeland exists only in her memory and her attempt to thrive in America seems doomed from the start.

In New York, she strives to put down roots. She teaches at a school for underprivileged boys, where her eccentric methods cross boundaries. She befriends a homeless swindler, and the two participate in a pyramid scheme reselling Birkin bags.

But America is stifling her. In an attempt to regain control, she becomes preoccupied with purity, cleanliness and self-image, all while drawing her students into her obsessions. In an unforgettable denouement, her childhood memories converge with her material and existential statelessness and the narrator unravels spectacularly.

In enthralling, sensory prose, The Coin explores nature and civilisation, beauty and justice, class and belonging – all while resisting easy moralising. Provocative, wry and inviting, The Coin marks the arrival of a major new literary voice.

About the Author

Yasmin Zaher is a Palestinian writer and journalist. She got her B.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering at Yale University and an MFA in Creative Writing at The New School, where she was advised by Katie Kitamura. She lives in Paris.

Reviews

"Birkin-bag economics meets colorism and racism and feminism and more—it's beyond intersectionality—in Zaher's stunning and surreal debut novel of a young Palestinian woman who lives and teaches in New York City" —Bethanne Patrick, the Los Angeles Times

"Yasmin Zaher's The Coin does much more than meet the highest standards of literature: it sets its own standards ... The Coin is not a wonderful beginning that promises masterpieces to come – it already is a masterpiece" —Slavoj Zizek

"The Coin feels like a distinctly Palestinian novel-concerning itself, as it does, with its narrator's statelessness and increasing sense of isolation ... Zaher's book also does the vital work of reminding the reader that there is no single story to be told about any group of people in any part of the world. Zaher's protagonist struggles under the weight of immense trauma, yes, but she's also a fashionista, an obsessor, and an educator doing her (sometimes-flawed) best to impart wisdom. In other words, she's a human being full of complexities and contradictions, and spending time in her world is both dizzying and delightful" —Emma Specter, Vogue

"The Coin is a brilliant, audacious, powerhouse of a novel. A story of obsession and appetite, politics and class, it is deliciously unruly. An exceptional debut by an outrageous new talent" —Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies and A Separation

"[A] sharp and disarming debut novel... Zaher is expert at crisp turns of phrase that reveal how brittle her narrator is... A sturdy novel about an unsteady person is no small feat, and Zaher's prose is remarkably controlled" —Mark Athitakis, the Washington Post

Dimensions: 14.71 x 2.34 x 21.62 cm