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The Coin
A bold and unabashed novel about a young Palestinian woman's unraveling, far from home, as she gets caught up in a scheme reselling Birkin bags
The Coin follows a Palestinian woman as she pursues a dream that generations of her family have failed to live and thrive in America. She teaches at a school for underprivileged boys in New York, where her eccentric methods cross conventional boundaries. She befriends a homeless swindler and the two participate in a pyramid scheme reselling Birkin bags, the value of which "increases, year by year, regardless of poverty, of war, of famine." The juxtaposition of luxury and the abject engulfs her as she is able to con her way to bag after bag, preoccupied by the suffering she knows of the world.
Eventually, her body and mind go to war. America is stifling her—her willfulness, her sexuality, her ideology. 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 feelings of existential statelessness, and the narrator unravels spectacularly.
Enthralling, sensory, and uncanny, The Coin explores materiality, nature and civilization, class, homelessness, sexuality, beauty—and how oppression and inherited trauma manifest in every area of our lives—all while resisting easy moralizing. Provocative and original, humorous and inviting, The Coin marks the arrival of a major new literary voice.
The Coin follows a Palestinian woman as she pursues a dream that generations of her family have failed to live and thrive in America. She teaches at a school for underprivileged boys in New York, where her eccentric methods cross conventional boundaries. She befriends a homeless swindler and the two participate in a pyramid scheme reselling Birkin bags, the value of which "increases, year by year, regardless of poverty, of war, of famine." The juxtaposition of luxury and the abject engulfs her as she is able to con her way to bag after bag, preoccupied by the suffering she knows of the world.
Eventually, her body and mind go to war. America is stifling her—her willfulness, her sexuality, her ideology. 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 feelings of existential statelessness, and the narrator unravels spectacularly.
Enthralling, sensory, and uncanny, The Coin explores materiality, nature and civilization, class, homelessness, sexuality, beauty—and how oppression and inherited trauma manifest in every area of our lives—all while resisting easy moralizing. Provocative and original, humorous and inviting, The Coin marks the arrival of a major new literary voice.
240 pages, Paperback
First published July 9, 2024
1307 people are currently reading
53093 people want to read
About the author
Yasmin Zaher
4 books215 followersYasmin Zaher is a Palestinian journalist and writer born in 1991 in Jerusalem. The Coin is her first novel.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,591 reviews
January 23, 2025
Had to stop my head from nodding every time I was reading this character discussing New York culture. Audaciously astute.
July 25, 2025
i love books about women unraveling.
https://emmareadstoomuch.substack.com...
i think so often in modern literary fiction, books either underestimate the intelligence of the reader or overestimate the intelligence of themselves.
i've read lots of books that overexplain themselves, making every theme and symbol and intention very obvious and taking all the fun out of analyzing on your own. and i've read lots of books that fall apart under pressure, revealing that their various choices, in spite of (usually) heavy style or pretension, don't coalesce into anything.
this, finally, balanced each perfectly. a striking, disturbing, intense, complex read with something to say. i'd say it was a treat to read, but it wasn't — and that was the point.
bottom line: the sweet spot.
(thank you to the publisher for the e-arc)
https://emmareadstoomuch.substack.com...
i think so often in modern literary fiction, books either underestimate the intelligence of the reader or overestimate the intelligence of themselves.
i've read lots of books that overexplain themselves, making every theme and symbol and intention very obvious and taking all the fun out of analyzing on your own. and i've read lots of books that fall apart under pressure, revealing that their various choices, in spite of (usually) heavy style or pretension, don't coalesce into anything.
this, finally, balanced each perfectly. a striking, disturbing, intense, complex read with something to say. i'd say it was a treat to read, but it wasn't — and that was the point.
bottom line: the sweet spot.
(thank you to the publisher for the e-arc)
July 27, 2024
Yasmin Zaher’s a Palestinian journalist based in Paris. Her debut novel grew out of her time studying in the U.S. It’s set in 2016, narrated by a young, nameless Palestinian woman who’s recently relocated to New York. Although she’s taken a job in a school, her lifestyle’s largely funded by family money, an inheritance stemming from her parents’ death in a car accident during her childhood. The woman lives in a state of constant vigilance, rigorously policing herself: her environment and her body. She dresses in understated but obviously high-end fashion from Stella McCartney to McQueen. Clothing that partly acts to establish an identity but also forms a kind of protective armour. Although what she’s protecting herself against is unclear. She’s queer, essentially isolated but maintains a desultory bond with wealthy developer Sasha. However, the narrator’s stated desire for detachment, to focus only on her own pleasure, is challenged by her growing affection for her pupils – all boys, mostly Black American, some immigrants, all poor or otherwise marginalised. A group on which she tests out her theories about morality, her conception of how to survive and thrive in an intrinsically corrupt society.
The narrator appears to have succumbed to contemporary capitalism’s dictates, fully invested in consumer culture, flaunting an array of positional goods. In New York her ownership of a Birkin bag marks her out as successful, enviable even. A symbol that possibly overrides her status as ‘other’ in a place where she’s more conscious of the colour of her skin than ever before. It’s clear that here in New York social status resides in how you’re perceived. The Birkin’s especially significant because of its aura of exclusivity, a product deliberately made scarce: ownership not only subject to long waiting lists but to customers proving themselves worthy of the brand. A hierarchy of value that the narrator clearly comprehends: it seems telling that her encounter with a stylish, homeless man, she dubs Trenchcoat, is directly tied to her discarded Burberry raincoat – Burberry of course a brand devalued by its excessive popularity during the late 1990s, still desperate to reinstate its former cachet.
But this outward show of monied sophistication is undermined by the narrator’s private domestic routines. She resorts to increasingly-complicated cleansing rituals, moving from on-trend Korean beauty regimes to brutally scrubbing every inch of her body and her apartment. She’s obsessed with removing the filth and stench of the city, a possible rejection of its culture and values. But she also seems to view herself as defiled. A fixation which partly connects to her past. This past has invaded her body, inside, unreachable, is a coin swallowed during the accident that killed her mother and father. The coin’s a shekel – Israeli currency – yet also a British pound, simultaneously signifying internalised oppression, trauma, the legacy of racism and colonialism. But tied to capitalism too, with its emphasis on the commodification of the self. The narrator’s feeling that she’s both polluted and polluting are intensified by her gender - circulating notions of women as inherently impure. Their acceptability connected to an ability to keep a “clean” house and a “clean” body; rewarded for removing the evidence of their embodiment, their potential “animality,” shaved, plucked, and deodorised. As a woman of colour, the narrator’s growing self-disgust is intensified by living in a country where whiteness signifies virtue, and colourism runs rampant.
Zaher’s narrative’s strongly influenced by Clarice Lispector’s The Passion According to G.H. Zaher’s themes and preoccupations overlap with Lispector’s particularly her emphasis on masking, loss of authentic selfhood, experiences of displacement and exile. Although Zaher’s novel more accessible than Lispector’s, despite its ambiguities and surreal qualities it’s frequently more reminiscent of the work of writers like Mona Awad and Otessa Moshfegh. In addition, Zaher’s incorporated autobiographical elements, her narrator’s childhood memories of her grandmother replicate Zaher’s own; the narrator’s critique of American society, the shock of its contradictions, its inequalities, its insularity, echo Zaher’s impressions.
As her story unfolds, recounted to an unnamed presence, the narrator slowly unravels. A chance betrayal results in her retreat from the outside world. A retreat that resembles a kind of cathartic, personalised performance art. An attempt to revert to a state of nature, to reclaim her history and her inner self. It’s an intriguing progression but it also felt oddly conventional, contradictory – in danger of reinstating the individualistic underpinnings of the system it’s meant to counter. Like many first novels it’s undoubtedly flawed, slightly unbalanced, sagging in places, but it was frequently arresting, often relatable, and highly readable.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Footnote for an ARC
Rating: 3.5
The narrator appears to have succumbed to contemporary capitalism’s dictates, fully invested in consumer culture, flaunting an array of positional goods. In New York her ownership of a Birkin bag marks her out as successful, enviable even. A symbol that possibly overrides her status as ‘other’ in a place where she’s more conscious of the colour of her skin than ever before. It’s clear that here in New York social status resides in how you’re perceived. The Birkin’s especially significant because of its aura of exclusivity, a product deliberately made scarce: ownership not only subject to long waiting lists but to customers proving themselves worthy of the brand. A hierarchy of value that the narrator clearly comprehends: it seems telling that her encounter with a stylish, homeless man, she dubs Trenchcoat, is directly tied to her discarded Burberry raincoat – Burberry of course a brand devalued by its excessive popularity during the late 1990s, still desperate to reinstate its former cachet.
But this outward show of monied sophistication is undermined by the narrator’s private domestic routines. She resorts to increasingly-complicated cleansing rituals, moving from on-trend Korean beauty regimes to brutally scrubbing every inch of her body and her apartment. She’s obsessed with removing the filth and stench of the city, a possible rejection of its culture and values. But she also seems to view herself as defiled. A fixation which partly connects to her past. This past has invaded her body, inside, unreachable, is a coin swallowed during the accident that killed her mother and father. The coin’s a shekel – Israeli currency – yet also a British pound, simultaneously signifying internalised oppression, trauma, the legacy of racism and colonialism. But tied to capitalism too, with its emphasis on the commodification of the self. The narrator’s feeling that she’s both polluted and polluting are intensified by her gender - circulating notions of women as inherently impure. Their acceptability connected to an ability to keep a “clean” house and a “clean” body; rewarded for removing the evidence of their embodiment, their potential “animality,” shaved, plucked, and deodorised. As a woman of colour, the narrator’s growing self-disgust is intensified by living in a country where whiteness signifies virtue, and colourism runs rampant.
Zaher’s narrative’s strongly influenced by Clarice Lispector’s The Passion According to G.H. Zaher’s themes and preoccupations overlap with Lispector’s particularly her emphasis on masking, loss of authentic selfhood, experiences of displacement and exile. Although Zaher’s novel more accessible than Lispector’s, despite its ambiguities and surreal qualities it’s frequently more reminiscent of the work of writers like Mona Awad and Otessa Moshfegh. In addition, Zaher’s incorporated autobiographical elements, her narrator’s childhood memories of her grandmother replicate Zaher’s own; the narrator’s critique of American society, the shock of its contradictions, its inequalities, its insularity, echo Zaher’s impressions.
As her story unfolds, recounted to an unnamed presence, the narrator slowly unravels. A chance betrayal results in her retreat from the outside world. A retreat that resembles a kind of cathartic, personalised performance art. An attempt to revert to a state of nature, to reclaim her history and her inner self. It’s an intriguing progression but it also felt oddly conventional, contradictory – in danger of reinstating the individualistic underpinnings of the system it’s meant to counter. Like many first novels it’s undoubtedly flawed, slightly unbalanced, sagging in places, but it was frequently arresting, often relatable, and highly readable.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Footnote for an ARC
Rating: 3.5
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December 23, 2024i fear i've veered too far into the literary genre
July 30, 2024
we've read this book before, this book is straight off the production line — we've read Luster or I'm a Fan or Mona or maybe the grandmother of them all, written almost a hundred years ago now, My Year of Rest and Relaxation; and that's just what I could think up without leaving the sofa or referring to any notes. we've met the first-person narrator of this book before — chatty, glamorous, glamorous, we are assured, we are given plenty of evidence as to her beauty and her brandedness both, making references (in this case to Bakhtin) that reassure us that we are not reading Junk but Literature; but at the same time in possession of a remarkably invariant set of character flaws, judgmental, vacuous, pour épater les bourgeois being racist or making fun of a fat person or performing some other act that signals to us that we are enlightened readers, we are not blindly capitulating to the moral police, we are in the real world now, we are among the select who understand that narrators can be unlikeable, our philosophy of fiction is just saying ‘characters don't have to be relatable’ to each other in tones of soft delight; but then isn't it curious how all unlikeable narrators are hot and racist? is an ugly non-racist axiomatically likeable and therefore off the table? and why are all these women the same? does the caloric restriction make them stupid?
— and in any case, we have also seen this narrative before — aforementioned edgily unlikeable woman undergoes prolonged psychological dissolution — during which she briefly deviates from her essentially behaviourally heterosexual lifestyle by sleeping with a woman, which of course as we all know is the same thing as sleeping with yourself, a claim that many of these novels make more subtly than this one — and all this due, in an extremely obvious and surface-level way, to unaddressed trauma caused by something morally beyond reproach (in this case, dead parents, being Palestinian) that in its simplicity and nature gives the lie to previous professions of edginess. simple, unchallenging sentences which fit well on a smartphone screen are also essential. (in fact this book is the board book version, the See Spot Run version, of The Passion according to G.H.. say what you will about Clarice — and I do — but at least back in her day sentences were real sentences!)
enough! enough! we have read them all! it is OK if you stop writing them now!
— and in any case, we have also seen this narrative before — aforementioned edgily unlikeable woman undergoes prolonged psychological dissolution — during which she briefly deviates from her essentially behaviourally heterosexual lifestyle by sleeping with a woman, which of course as we all know is the same thing as sleeping with yourself, a claim that many of these novels make more subtly than this one — and all this due, in an extremely obvious and surface-level way, to unaddressed trauma caused by something morally beyond reproach (in this case, dead parents, being Palestinian) that in its simplicity and nature gives the lie to previous professions of edginess. simple, unchallenging sentences which fit well on a smartphone screen are also essential. (in fact this book is the board book version, the See Spot Run version, of The Passion according to G.H.. say what you will about Clarice — and I do — but at least back in her day sentences were real sentences!)
enough! enough! we have read them all! it is OK if you stop writing them now!
May 22, 2024
I love the cover which sums the book up well.
A Palestinian woman moves to New York and starts teaching but quickly appreciates that she knows nothing of the texts that she’s meant to teach, so sets her own unorthodox path. That’s pretty much par for the course with our narrator but how reliable is she? Then she meets ‘Trenchcoat’ who sucks her into a moneymaking scheme, then of course, there’s Sasha, loyal Sasha but for how long? She tells the reader of the ups, downs, obsessions difficult issues and a whole lot more about being a ‘Stranger in a foreign land’ and explores social issues along the way.
It’s possible to admire a book but not to enjoy it very much and that’s because this is too weird and it’s a strange experience being inside her mind. It’s very different, it’s creative that’s for sure and has a dream like, hallucinatory quality to it as she pours she out a stream of consciousness. Inside her mind is an uncomfortable place to be, at times it’s very dark and disturbing, it’s unsettling and on occasions it’s a tad unsavoury. She seems to unravel, although I’d say she’s fairly unravelled before she starts unravelling even even further. She does make some very incisive comments and observations that give you pause for thought .
She’s clearly in pain, probably damaged and much of that is to do with her background. There’s betrayal, she becomes obsessive about a number of things which is very understandable. The significance of the coin is interesting and you can see how it changes her.
I confess I’m not entirely sure I understand what the author is getting at, it’s too odd, too confusing as it meanders it’s way back-and-forth. It’s probably far too clever for me but others seem to have loved it so be sure to check out those reviews.
With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Bonnier Books for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.
A Palestinian woman moves to New York and starts teaching but quickly appreciates that she knows nothing of the texts that she’s meant to teach, so sets her own unorthodox path. That’s pretty much par for the course with our narrator but how reliable is she? Then she meets ‘Trenchcoat’ who sucks her into a moneymaking scheme, then of course, there’s Sasha, loyal Sasha but for how long? She tells the reader of the ups, downs, obsessions difficult issues and a whole lot more about being a ‘Stranger in a foreign land’ and explores social issues along the way.
It’s possible to admire a book but not to enjoy it very much and that’s because this is too weird and it’s a strange experience being inside her mind. It’s very different, it’s creative that’s for sure and has a dream like, hallucinatory quality to it as she pours she out a stream of consciousness. Inside her mind is an uncomfortable place to be, at times it’s very dark and disturbing, it’s unsettling and on occasions it’s a tad unsavoury. She seems to unravel, although I’d say she’s fairly unravelled before she starts unravelling even even further. She does make some very incisive comments and observations that give you pause for thought .
She’s clearly in pain, probably damaged and much of that is to do with her background. There’s betrayal, she becomes obsessive about a number of things which is very understandable. The significance of the coin is interesting and you can see how it changes her.
I confess I’m not entirely sure I understand what the author is getting at, it’s too odd, too confusing as it meanders it’s way back-and-forth. It’s probably far too clever for me but others seem to have loved it so be sure to check out those reviews.
With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Bonnier Books for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.
May 30, 2024
Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC
I wanted to love this. The premise sounds intriguing but it’s misleading. While the summary includes topics that are in the book, I don’t think they paint a good picture of this novel. This is a first-person stream of consciousness novel. Our main character is an immigrant from Palestine, who has suffered traumas and is now in New York City. She teaches at a school for underprivileged boys and I use the word teaching loosely. What we see on page is her taking extreme liberties with the curriculum and the kids and doing what she wants. Most of the time, it’s fine, but some of it I thought crossed the line. We see her dating life, her obsession with money and luxury items. There’s also an intense focus on cleanliness, specifically her body. We get intimate run downs of her shaving and bathing routines. I don’t know if I missed the point but I don’t really understand the message here. She does eventually get involved with someone and the Birkin bag scheme but also, not the main plot of the book. Was there a plot? Honestly, I don’t think so. She starts off odd and continues to descend into — I don’t know if madness is the word — but she gets worse. She was rarely a character I wanted to root for. There are some lines in the book that stood out to me and make excellent critique of society but overall, I didn’t enjoy this experience. I hope this novel resonates with someone but it didn’t work for me.
I wanted to love this. The premise sounds intriguing but it’s misleading. While the summary includes topics that are in the book, I don’t think they paint a good picture of this novel. This is a first-person stream of consciousness novel. Our main character is an immigrant from Palestine, who has suffered traumas and is now in New York City. She teaches at a school for underprivileged boys and I use the word teaching loosely. What we see on page is her taking extreme liberties with the curriculum and the kids and doing what she wants. Most of the time, it’s fine, but some of it I thought crossed the line. We see her dating life, her obsession with money and luxury items. There’s also an intense focus on cleanliness, specifically her body. We get intimate run downs of her shaving and bathing routines. I don’t know if I missed the point but I don’t really understand the message here. She does eventually get involved with someone and the Birkin bag scheme but also, not the main plot of the book. Was there a plot? Honestly, I don’t think so. She starts off odd and continues to descend into — I don’t know if madness is the word — but she gets worse. She was rarely a character I wanted to root for. There are some lines in the book that stood out to me and make excellent critique of society but overall, I didn’t enjoy this experience. I hope this novel resonates with someone but it didn’t work for me.
July 10, 2024
Having read the summary I was expecting a book about a Palestinian woman, reasonably well off, who comes to New York in order to thrive. She works as a teacher at an academy but whether through a desire for the unconventional or laziness (I honestly couldn't tell) she teaches the boys to think for themselves and be as unconventional as she thinks she is.
I'll be honest, as the story progressed it gave me a headache and the final third (for me) was somewhat incomprehensible. I didn't know if everything was an allegory or metaphor or not.
I enjoy a novel that pushes the boundaries but I was never entirely clear what The Coin was trying to tell me. The title of the book is the object to whom the author addresses her thoughts and I'm afraid I didn't even understand the significance of the coin.
Not for me I'm sorry to say. Perhaps my lack of intellect as regards metaphorical/allegorical writing let me down. Or else I was reading too much into it and didn't understand a word.
Thanks to Netgalley and Footnote Press for the pre-approved advance review copy.
I'll be honest, as the story progressed it gave me a headache and the final third (for me) was somewhat incomprehensible. I didn't know if everything was an allegory or metaphor or not.
I enjoy a novel that pushes the boundaries but I was never entirely clear what The Coin was trying to tell me. The title of the book is the object to whom the author addresses her thoughts and I'm afraid I didn't even understand the significance of the coin.
Not for me I'm sorry to say. Perhaps my lack of intellect as regards metaphorical/allegorical writing let me down. Or else I was reading too much into it and didn't understand a word.
Thanks to Netgalley and Footnote Press for the pre-approved advance review copy.
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August 7, 2024I thought this rocked and also that it was entirely mismarketed lol
March 12, 2024
While the chorus of “Bella ciao” played over and over again, the movement became rhythmic. At first it just wobbled, heating, until it got much hotter than the rest of me, until finally it was blazing and spinning inside my body. And then I understood at once. It was the coin. I had no doubt about it, I just knew. I had put it there when I was little, in the car ride down south. For more than two decades the coin was gone, I didn’t know where it was. And then, for some reason in New York, it was resurrected.
Yasmin Zaher is a Jerusalem-born Palestinian journalist and The Coin is her first novel: and it absolutely knocked me off my feet. The main character — a young Palestinian woman: rich and beautiful, newly arrived in NYC to work as a private middle school English teacher (even though she hasn’t read any of the English classics), physically and existentially stateless — is not outwardly a victim of history looking for sympathy. And yet she suffers bizarre, body-based obsessions, and as her actions approach a breakdown, it’s obvious that, despite outward appearances, trauma (both personal and historical) underpin and affect her entire existence. I have never experienced anything like this novel — I don’t believe I have read a book written by a Palestinian author before — and this exposure to other lives and voices is exactly the reason why I read. This might be a bit challenging for those who like bodies to remain sanitised and out of sight, but this is a novel I would urge everyone to read; and especially at this time. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
In the morning I brushed my teeth with a soft toothbrush and my favorite Cattier toothpaste. Then I washed my face with an oil-based cleanser, followed by a water-based cleanser, followed by toner. All imported from Korea, the world capital of skin like porcelain, purity, and nothingness. Two thousand more years of snail cream and you will see a woman’s brain through her face. Then, after drinking a glass of hot lemon water, a glass of lukewarm water, and a cup of coffee, I emptied my bowels. This happened easily, gloriously, requiring no effort or thought, like flipping through an abridged history of the fall of an empire. All out, insides clean.
A trust fund orphan (with her brother administering her inheritance back home), the unnamed main character has a strict cleaning and beauty regime, wears a capsule wardrobe of designer clothes (all in black), drinks Chivas, enjoys several lovers, and never goes anywhere without the vintage Birkin handbag (size 35) that she inherited from her mother. The publisher’s blurb explains that this is about her time teaching “with eccentric methods” at a school for underprivileged boys, and how she “gets caught up in a scheme reselling Birkin bags”, and while these are the plot points that keep the novel rolling along, this is so much more about what’s happening inside this young woman and what she wants to share about her thoughts and background with the reader; and that often gets political:
• To be honest with you, in New York I saw the dirtiest people I had ever seen, although I’d never been to a third world country. I came from Palestine, which was neither a country nor the third world, it was its own thing, and the women in my family placed a lot of importance on being clean, perhaps because there was little else they could control in their lives.
• When Netanyahu and Trump were elected I thought those were good days, because the truth had come to light. But it seemed not only that the truth was ugly, but also that ugly was beautiful. The people adore the monster, the rich want to look poor.
• It was reported that fifty-five people were killed in Gaza, and I felt a pinch in my chest. But when I looked up at the trees, at the sky, I saw that nothing was changed.
From the presence of the titular coin — a shekel the main character swallowed as a child, which she never knowingly passed, and which she now suspects has lodged itself beneath the skin between her shoulder blades, which she can’t quite reach with her Turkish loofah — to a back-to-nature mania that her breakdown leads to, this is very much about this woman’s body (which is, I suppose, the singular homeland of a stateless person), and the writing about this body is discomfiting, explicitly sensual, and illuminating. The following scene — in which the woman walks naked in the woods outside NYC, while on a trip with her lover Sasha, and is frightened by a deer — seems to hold the key to the whole thing:
I come from a land that is a graveyard. For millennia, all kinds of people were born there, they died there, or were killed, and some were even resurrected or reborn. It was bloody, haunted, and doomed, but it belonged to mankind. Nature in America was uncivilized and untamed. I didn’t know how to read it. If a deer was some kind of warning sign, I wouldn’t have known. Before Sasha could see him, the deer turned around and left. I saw his fluffy white tail behind him, like the tail of a rabbit, and all my fear turned into giddiness. Sasha didn’t leave the house to look for the deer, he stayed indoors, keeping a distance from nature. He was a complex man, but you have to understand that everything outside of me only serves a function. Yes, I am a good woman, I respect people, I listen to their voices. Yours too. But this is not Bakhtin’s carnival, this is a centralized nervous system.
That last line was so intriguing to me that I had to look into “Bakhtin’s carnival” and learned (here) that this refers to the theory of Carnivalesque/Rabelasian “writing that depicts the de-stabilization or reversal of power structures…by mobilizing humour, satire, and grotesquery in all its forms, but especially if it has to do with the body and bodily functions…often read as a utopian antidote to repressive forms of power everywhere and a celebration of the possibility for affirmative change, however transitory in nature.” So while I have read and enjoyed Rabelais, and appreciate that form of satire as protest, it feels like a post-modern update for Zaher to explicitly write that this is not Baktin’s carnival, “this is a centralized nervous system”: this is real life, a real trauma-informed breakdown, and I see no reason why Zaher can’t both hearken to the carnivalesque (as a literary tradition) and repudiate it (as a personal experience). I absolutely loved everything about this novel — this is a voice, in both tone and particular POV, that I have never before encountered — and I hope The Coin is read widely upon its release. Full stars, no hesitation.
July 31, 2024
I did not get it. But I liked it. 🥰
June 17, 2025
the coin is not subtle in its metaphors, but it doesn’t have to be, and that’s partly what gives the book its power.
the book follows a young, unnamed palestinian woman who teaches underprivileged boys at a middle school in new york and is dedicated to her obsessive cleaning rituals. it’s a stream of consciousness novel, following the narrator as she attempts to find a sense of belonging and identity in america, and ultimately begins to unravel.
it offers a great exploration of the binaries of cleanliness and filth / wealth and poverty and how they intersect, particularly against the background of american culture, privilege, and oppression. the narrator is materialistic and chases wealth while also being repulsed by it, which manifests in her compulsive scrubbing of her body as she attempts to wash the stain of america from her skin. the narrator’s voice is witty and mean, and her astute observations about new york and america in general help to make the book so compelling.
the novel draws a fine line between rampant american consumerism and the narrator’s own statelessness, the dichotomy between having everything and having nothing. the metaphor at the heart of the novel, the titular coin, (which the narrator swallowed as a child and now believes is stuck in an area of her back that cleaning can’t reach) can be interpreted in a myriad of ways, but ultimately it serves as a physical manifestation of her displacement, a vestige of her palestinian identity and a stubborn refusal to fully assimilate.
very ‘my year of rest of relaxation’ meets ‘nightbitch’ (i’ve also seen people compare it to the vegetarian by han kang but i haven’t read that yet!)
the book follows a young, unnamed palestinian woman who teaches underprivileged boys at a middle school in new york and is dedicated to her obsessive cleaning rituals. it’s a stream of consciousness novel, following the narrator as she attempts to find a sense of belonging and identity in america, and ultimately begins to unravel.
it offers a great exploration of the binaries of cleanliness and filth / wealth and poverty and how they intersect, particularly against the background of american culture, privilege, and oppression. the narrator is materialistic and chases wealth while also being repulsed by it, which manifests in her compulsive scrubbing of her body as she attempts to wash the stain of america from her skin. the narrator’s voice is witty and mean, and her astute observations about new york and america in general help to make the book so compelling.
the novel draws a fine line between rampant american consumerism and the narrator’s own statelessness, the dichotomy between having everything and having nothing. the metaphor at the heart of the novel, the titular coin, (which the narrator swallowed as a child and now believes is stuck in an area of her back that cleaning can’t reach) can be interpreted in a myriad of ways, but ultimately it serves as a physical manifestation of her displacement, a vestige of her palestinian identity and a stubborn refusal to fully assimilate.
very ‘my year of rest of relaxation’ meets ‘nightbitch’ (i’ve also seen people compare it to the vegetarian by han kang but i haven’t read that yet!)
July 12, 2025
I picked this up while studying for a very important exam and honestly, I should’ve just kept studying (My pediatrics textbook was more compelling than whatever this is).
I was genuinely excited to support a book written by a Palestinian author, and I went in with high hopes. Unfortunately, it ended up being one of the most disappointing reading experiences I’ve had. I finished the book, but it felt like a chore from start to finish. Despite touching on themes like mental illness, Palestinian heritage, and even a Birkin bag scheme, none of these elements were explored in a way that felt meaningful or compelling.
The entire narrative seemed like one extended metaphor, but it didn’t land for me at all. And I say that as someone who reads a lot, and as a Palestinian myself, this story should have resonated deeply. Instead, I was left confused and underwhelmed.
To say I’m disappointed would be putting it mildly. Every time I see this book, I feel a mix of frustration and regret.
I was genuinely excited to support a book written by a Palestinian author, and I went in with high hopes. Unfortunately, it ended up being one of the most disappointing reading experiences I’ve had. I finished the book, but it felt like a chore from start to finish. Despite touching on themes like mental illness, Palestinian heritage, and even a Birkin bag scheme, none of these elements were explored in a way that felt meaningful or compelling.
The entire narrative seemed like one extended metaphor, but it didn’t land for me at all. And I say that as someone who reads a lot, and as a Palestinian myself, this story should have resonated deeply. Instead, I was left confused and underwhelmed.
To say I’m disappointed would be putting it mildly. Every time I see this book, I feel a mix of frustration and regret.
August 21, 2025
c’était parfait omg
October 11, 2024
Fleeting moments of insight in the stream of consciousness of a woman with utterly putrid energy who makes it hard to have sympathy for her even when she deserves it.
There are other books with similar ideas and vibes that managed to at least be entertaining, this one delivered monotony and constant reminders of the main character's desire to attain a perception of herself as being part of a certain class through branding.
There are other books with similar ideas and vibes that managed to at least be entertaining, this one delivered monotony and constant reminders of the main character's desire to attain a perception of herself as being part of a certain class through branding.
April 4, 2025
Unfortunately didn’t love this one. I think there were some interesting themes related to trauma, loss, and displacement. But I felt like the book suffered from the “angsty malaise coming of age” vibe that is trendy but doesn’t clearly convey much. The protagonist displays highly questionable behavior during her teaching job and she has some odd (probably problematic?) thoughts about Black people and fat people. But, unlike in some other books, these problematic parts of our protagonist didn’t seem to be explored or written about in a way to highlight growth, meaningful change, or even that these elements served some purpose.
Reading other reviews, I can somewhat see how this book highlights how trauma affects the protagonist’s behavior. Still, the writing and voice didn’t wow me enough to merit more than three stars.
Reading other reviews, I can somewhat see how this book highlights how trauma affects the protagonist’s behavior. Still, the writing and voice didn’t wow me enough to merit more than three stars.
books-i-remember-dnfing
July 3, 2025DNF at 48%, I wish I were a lit major so I could maybe figure out what the hell I am supposed to take away from this book.
July 12, 2024
What a misleading premise! "The Coin" promises intrigue but delivers monotony.
If you're expecting a gripping tale of scheming or reselling Birkin bags, you're in for a disappointment. This book offers neither. Instead, it's a tedious journey through the protagonist's obsessions with cleanliness, clothes, students, and disjointed childhood flashbacks, spiraling into an incoherent mess.
Contrary to its synopsis, "The Coin" is a first-person narrative of a Palestinian heiress in New York who is compulsively clean, dedicating pages to the grotesque details of her hygiene routines. Her job at a private boys' school is barely about teaching and more about using the students as subjects for her bizarre stream of consciousness moments. The protagonist is deeply unlikable and strange, not "unraveling" as promised but rather starting off unstable. The book hints at deeper themes of existential turmoil and Palestinian heritage, but these are lost in a mire of pointless detail.
The protagonist's dream isn't the American Dream; it's a distorted reenactment of Palestinian suffering which I found thoroughly distasteful.
Ultimately, this book is neither unique nor memorable. If you dislike disjointed, stream of consciousness narratives with hardly any resolution at the end, "The Coin" most likely won't appeal to you.
If you're expecting a gripping tale of scheming or reselling Birkin bags, you're in for a disappointment. This book offers neither. Instead, it's a tedious journey through the protagonist's obsessions with cleanliness, clothes, students, and disjointed childhood flashbacks, spiraling into an incoherent mess.
Contrary to its synopsis, "The Coin" is a first-person narrative of a Palestinian heiress in New York who is compulsively clean, dedicating pages to the grotesque details of her hygiene routines. Her job at a private boys' school is barely about teaching and more about using the students as subjects for her bizarre stream of consciousness moments. The protagonist is deeply unlikable and strange, not "unraveling" as promised but rather starting off unstable. The book hints at deeper themes of existential turmoil and Palestinian heritage, but these are lost in a mire of pointless detail.
The protagonist's dream isn't the American Dream; it's a distorted reenactment of Palestinian suffering which I found thoroughly distasteful.
Ultimately, this book is neither unique nor memorable. If you dislike disjointed, stream of consciousness narratives with hardly any resolution at the end, "The Coin" most likely won't appeal to you.
June 23, 2024
A strange, almost surreal story about a Palestinian woman who comes to NYC and slowly unravels as she considers the cost of being human. She's blocked from accessing fully the inheritance left to her and lives on an allowance (albeit clearly a healthy sum), while teaching at a all-boys school in the city with some unconventional methods. She also befriends a drifter who pulls her into a scheme to resell Birkin bags on the black market. All of this is told in a wry, uncanny style a la Ottessa Moshfegh.
Sadly, I just didn't quite *get* this novel. I am on board for weird and wacky, and I thought the ideas explored were interesting, but it just never all came together for me in a satisfying way. Some of the thoughts the character has don't make sense to me, and perhaps they don't make sense to her either which shows her devolving character and separation from humanity. But as a reader it was not always enjoyable to feel left in the dark and that the author's intentions were inscrutable.
I think there's definitely a readership for this out there, perhaps those who really love the 'unhinged women' trope and are looking for something from a new perspective, particularly an immigrant POV and that examines wealth and homeland.
Sadly, I just didn't quite *get* this novel. I am on board for weird and wacky, and I thought the ideas explored were interesting, but it just never all came together for me in a satisfying way. Some of the thoughts the character has don't make sense to me, and perhaps they don't make sense to her either which shows her devolving character and separation from humanity. But as a reader it was not always enjoyable to feel left in the dark and that the author's intentions were inscrutable.
I think there's definitely a readership for this out there, perhaps those who really love the 'unhinged women' trope and are looking for something from a new perspective, particularly an immigrant POV and that examines wealth and homeland.
January 7, 2025
The Coin is a book of contradictions.
A young Palestinian woman lives in New York. She is obsessed with cleanliness, though despite her rigorous routines, she understands that she may never truly be clean. She’s obsessed with wealth, but knows what the items she purchases represent. That it is the wealthy who are the dirtiest of all.
We follow her as she attempts to create structure through her job teaching at an underprivileged boys school, instilling what she’s learned about class and race in them. Then, at night, she scrubs off her top layer of skin. When she meets a homeless man, he ropes her into a pyramid scheme of buying and selling Birkin bags. She has never been so close, and yet so distinctly far from the American dream.
I thought this was a sharp, deeply cutting novel, destined to become a cult classic, favored by those who adore disaffected narrators. I was entranced!
A young Palestinian woman lives in New York. She is obsessed with cleanliness, though despite her rigorous routines, she understands that she may never truly be clean. She’s obsessed with wealth, but knows what the items she purchases represent. That it is the wealthy who are the dirtiest of all.
We follow her as she attempts to create structure through her job teaching at an underprivileged boys school, instilling what she’s learned about class and race in them. Then, at night, she scrubs off her top layer of skin. When she meets a homeless man, he ropes her into a pyramid scheme of buying and selling Birkin bags. She has never been so close, and yet so distinctly far from the American dream.
I thought this was a sharp, deeply cutting novel, destined to become a cult classic, favored by those who adore disaffected narrators. I was entranced!
July 28, 2024
I’m sure there are other contenders, but Yasmin Zaher’s The Coin, about a Palestinian woman in New York City, feels to me like the buzzy book of the summer. And maybe the weight of expectation did it no good, because I found this to be a fairly run-of-the-mill story about a woman under pressure. Obsessed with the filth of the city and seemingly lacking any kind of emotional life, the narrator ‘works’ at a private school for boys and strikes up a friendship with a homeless scammer. It’s all well-written, but I’ve read its like many times before, and it’s difficult to care about someone falling apart when they’re so rich that they’re insulated from consequence. The fact of its protagonist’s wealth makes The Coin virtually indistinguishable from the many stories of this type that already exist about affluent American women. Sure you can map certain anxieties attributed to nationality onto the character’s obsessions and actions, but honestly I think that’s a bit of a reach and not even what the book itself is going for – the author has said it’s ‘more of a New York novel than a Palestinian novel’.
Comparisons to Ottessa Moshfegh absolutely stand up, though: themes of filth and cleanliness, the constant judging of others, the emotional vacuity... The Coin reminded me in particular of the Moshfegh story ‘Bettering Myself’ (also about a highly incompetent teacher!), and it has some similarities to Jade Sharma’s Problems too (though I think that was a much better book).
Comparisons to Ottessa Moshfegh absolutely stand up, though: themes of filth and cleanliness, the constant judging of others, the emotional vacuity... The Coin reminded me in particular of the Moshfegh story ‘Bettering Myself’ (also about a highly incompetent teacher!), and it has some similarities to Jade Sharma’s Problems too (though I think that was a much better book).
August 2, 2024
Body as homeland not in metaphor but in the reality of statelessness… The mind shattering cognitive dissonance living in the imperial core… Ok. Need to reread this immediately if i can muster up the courage.
Also to the ppl who reviewed this poorly: the whole point is to not get it; the whole point is the insanity.
Also to the ppl who reviewed this poorly: the whole point is to not get it; the whole point is the insanity.
September 24, 2025
A long time ago, I was dreaming of being a writer. But I also have enough humility to admit that this road is not for me - not everyone can be a writer. After reading "The Coin", I realise that maybe I was wrong. Perhaps I had a shot, too.
January 30, 2025
sigh……another book about a unsound woman that goes nowhere and doesn’t say anything interesting… yawn
November 16, 2024
What even is this book? I have no idea what just happened but I know that tonally it was incredibly interesting. Who is the narrator addressing? What is going on with the coin and the Birkin bags? I’m going to read every Palestinian writer I can get my hands on and I kind of love that this has left me with nothing but questions.
August 8, 2024
idk wtf I read
December 16, 2025
WINNER of the 2025 £20,000 Dylan Thomas Prize for writers under 39 (odd cut-off, but it IS his age at death, so whatevs).
Real Rating: 4.75* of five
The Publisher Says: A bold and unabashed novel about a young Palestinian woman's unraveling, far from home, as she gets caught up in a scheme reselling Birkin bags
The Coin follows a Palestinian woman as she pursues a dream that generations of her family have failed at: to live and thrive in America. She teaches at a school for underprivileged boys in New York, where her eccentric methods cross conventional boundaries. She befriends a homeless swindler and the two participate in a pyramid scheme reselling Birkin bags, the value of which "increases, year by year, regardless of poverty, of war, of famine." The juxtaposition of luxury and the abject engulfs her as she is able to con her way to bag after bag, preoccupied by the suffering she knows of the world.
Eventually, her body and mind go to war. America is stifling her—her willfulness, her sexuality, her ideology. 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 feelings of existential statelessness, and the narrator unravels spectacularly.
Enthralling, sensory, and uncanny, The Coin explores materiality, nature and civilization, class, homelessness, sexuality, beauty—and how oppression and inherited trauma manifest in every area of our lives—all while resisting easy moralizing. Provocative and original, humorous and inviting, The Coin marks the arrival of a major new literary voice.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Jack Edwards of Jack in the Books, aka "the Internet's Resident Librarian," convinced me to procure this book by the way he warbled his fool head off about its glories.
Trust Jack, y'all.
Dangerous, that pretty boy, very dangerous. I'm glad I could get the DRC or this could become far more expensive than I can support very quickly.
The story of a woman's obsessions, her compulsive need to root herself, her intense physicality:
...all of a piece with her exile and search for the indefinable sense of Home.
It's a certain kind of narrative technique that, in the hands of some, can repel me faster than the Enterprise can raise its shields. I'm not a very big fan of "list fiction" where the cataloging of...stuff...stands in for showing me the narrator's a shallow, surface-obsessed person (cf. Quichotte by Rushdie). It gets old and repetitive fast, so is best deployed in shorter bursts in shorter works. Like this one.
A Palestinian is a stateless person, and a rootless person by definition. There is nothing on Earth that can fix this, and yet there nothing on Earth that can prevent a person, any person, from trying to accomplish that result. The narrator's endless fixations, it seems she develops them on the spot as events present her with their objects...I had to look up "Birkin bag" to see if it was a real thing...so she can cause some desired result. "You have to understand that everything outside of me only serves a function," she says at one point. It's not a viewpoint I myownself find all that easy to empathize with.
Yet I feel great sympathy for the narrator. She is cut off from her fortune, she is a lesbian in a misogynistic world that hates her for her genitals and the use she puts them to, she's in the thankless teaching profession. All of these are reasons to feel discontentment. Her tendency to instrumentalize others is both a logical outcome of her life circumstances and a mildly repellent kind of narcissism. It is a difficult balancing act for an author to achieve...realistic character flaws that elicit sympathy while evoking stronger, more visceral negative responses. Author Zaher does a bang-up job of it here.
I recommend the read to any who appreciate a deeper dive into a character's consciousness, as well as those in need of a story that suits the materialist mood of this moment in time. I'm eager for Author Zaher's next work.
Real Rating: 4.75* of five
The Publisher Says: A bold and unabashed novel about a young Palestinian woman's unraveling, far from home, as she gets caught up in a scheme reselling Birkin bags
The Coin follows a Palestinian woman as she pursues a dream that generations of her family have failed at: to live and thrive in America. She teaches at a school for underprivileged boys in New York, where her eccentric methods cross conventional boundaries. She befriends a homeless swindler and the two participate in a pyramid scheme reselling Birkin bags, the value of which "increases, year by year, regardless of poverty, of war, of famine." The juxtaposition of luxury and the abject engulfs her as she is able to con her way to bag after bag, preoccupied by the suffering she knows of the world.
Eventually, her body and mind go to war. America is stifling her—her willfulness, her sexuality, her ideology. 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 feelings of existential statelessness, and the narrator unravels spectacularly.
Enthralling, sensory, and uncanny, The Coin explores materiality, nature and civilization, class, homelessness, sexuality, beauty—and how oppression and inherited trauma manifest in every area of our lives—all while resisting easy moralizing. Provocative and original, humorous and inviting, The Coin marks the arrival of a major new literary voice.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Jack Edwards of Jack in the Books, aka "the Internet's Resident Librarian," convinced me to procure this book by the way he warbled his fool head off about its glories.
Trust Jack, y'all.
Dangerous, that pretty boy, very dangerous. I'm glad I could get the DRC or this could become far more expensive than I can support very quickly.
The story of a woman's obsessions, her compulsive need to root herself, her intense physicality:
In the morning I brushed my teeth with a soft toothbrush and my favorite Cattier toothpaste. Then I washed my face with an oil-based cleanser, followed by a water-based cleanser, followed by toner. All imported from Korea, the world capital of skin like porcelain, purity, and nothingness. Two thousand more years of snail cream and you will see a woman's brain through her face. Then, after drinking a glass of hot lemon water, a glass of lukewarm water, and a cup of coffee, I emptied my bowels. This happened easily, gloriously, requiring no effort or thought, like flipping through an abridged history of the fall of an empire. All out, insides clean.
...all of a piece with her exile and search for the indefinable sense of Home.
It's a certain kind of narrative technique that, in the hands of some, can repel me faster than the Enterprise can raise its shields. I'm not a very big fan of "list fiction" where the cataloging of...stuff...stands in for showing me the narrator's a shallow, surface-obsessed person (cf. Quichotte by Rushdie). It gets old and repetitive fast, so is best deployed in shorter bursts in shorter works. Like this one.
A Palestinian is a stateless person, and a rootless person by definition. There is nothing on Earth that can fix this, and yet there nothing on Earth that can prevent a person, any person, from trying to accomplish that result. The narrator's endless fixations, it seems she develops them on the spot as events present her with their objects...I had to look up "Birkin bag" to see if it was a real thing...so she can cause some desired result. "You have to understand that everything outside of me only serves a function," she says at one point. It's not a viewpoint I myownself find all that easy to empathize with.
Yet I feel great sympathy for the narrator. She is cut off from her fortune, she is a lesbian in a misogynistic world that hates her for her genitals and the use she puts them to, she's in the thankless teaching profession. All of these are reasons to feel discontentment. Her tendency to instrumentalize others is both a logical outcome of her life circumstances and a mildly repellent kind of narcissism. It is a difficult balancing act for an author to achieve...realistic character flaws that elicit sympathy while evoking stronger, more visceral negative responses. Author Zaher does a bang-up job of it here.
I recommend the read to any who appreciate a deeper dive into a character's consciousness, as well as those in need of a story that suits the materialist mood of this moment in time. I'm eager for Author Zaher's next work.
June 8, 2025
Now winner of the 2025 Dylan Thomas Prize, The Coin really is fizzing with energy – I struggled to put it down, I missed it every time I had to shut the covers and step off the tube, and and in the end, I can't help but wholeheartedly agree with the judging panel's assessment of it as 'a borderless novel, tackling trauma and grief with bold and poetic moments of quirkiness and humour'.
Drawing on the author's own experiences as a student in New York City, the novel follows the unnamed protagonist, a wealthy young Palestinian woman, as she unravels under the weight of her inheritance – a long-held, familial dream of living and thriving in America. But, as she remarks early on, 'how can the devil be the dream?'
Zaher is here clearly inspired by the themes of selfhood and displacement in Clarice Lispector's The Passion According to GH, but I find it concerning how many readers here are wrongly comparing her work to Ottessa Moshfegh's. While The Coin may initially seem driven by the same millennial malaise as My Year of Rest and Relaxation, it is far more deeply rooted in the political: capitalism, colonialism, the body as the homeland and the loss thereof are the primary themes underpinning the single shekel lodged in the protagonist's back, the dirt she is unable to reach and rid herself of. As Aria Aber says in her exemplary review in the LARB,
Zaher's narrator seems to have it all, but she doesn't: despite all this wealth she can't get herself clean, for it is wealth that sustains the dirt thar troubles her and which she spends hours sloughing off her skin in elaborate rituals – she can't control it. And that this destabilisation, this reversal of power structures through humour, satire, and grotesquery, especially bodily, doesn't grant her any actual freedom is key: as the protagonist says to the reader at one point, 'This is not Bakhtin's carnival, this is a centralized nervous system'. That playful, utopian antidote to repression doesn't exist where Zaher is from – far from a wealthy white New Yorker's year of rest and relaxation, her narrator lasts barely eight months in New York, 'less than a baby lasts in its mother's womb'. Instead, her 'malaise' stems from real-life intergenerational and personal trauma, intensified by her proximity to its core, and who is to say her final spiral isn't appropriate response? Indeed, the point is to lead us to ask who can call on the appropriateness of response in the first place.
This is a distinctly Palestinian story, yet distinct from the Palestinian stories we are used to reading, if at all. It is naturally a strange on to read at a time when Palestinian lives are so imperilled, and Zaher is more than aware of it, but she is hardly here speaking in the name of her people. There is a lot here about the messiness of identity, the unruliness of it, and unruliness in general, but at the root of it all is a sharply intelligent story brilliantly told – not one of disaffection, but of morality, control, and most of all, experience.
Drawing on the author's own experiences as a student in New York City, the novel follows the unnamed protagonist, a wealthy young Palestinian woman, as she unravels under the weight of her inheritance – a long-held, familial dream of living and thriving in America. But, as she remarks early on, 'how can the devil be the dream?'
Zaher is here clearly inspired by the themes of selfhood and displacement in Clarice Lispector's The Passion According to GH, but I find it concerning how many readers here are wrongly comparing her work to Ottessa Moshfegh's. While The Coin may initially seem driven by the same millennial malaise as My Year of Rest and Relaxation, it is far more deeply rooted in the political: capitalism, colonialism, the body as the homeland and the loss thereof are the primary themes underpinning the single shekel lodged in the protagonist's back, the dirt she is unable to reach and rid herself of. As Aria Aber says in her exemplary review in the LARB,
The coin, ingested on a summer road trip that led to the accident that orphaned her and her older brother, becomes a clef for the narrative and both a symptom and the cause of the protagonist’s neurosis. The coin functions not only as a metonym for the money that funds the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, leading back to the British Mandate and the Nakba, but also as an insignia for the inequality of the oppressed—after all, Palestinians don’t have their own monetary currency but are dependent on the Israeli shekel.Yes, the protagonist is a glamorous trust fund orphan, and yes, 'everything outside of [her] only serves a function', but Zaher, unlike Moshfegh, deploys her as a way to destablise the very idea of capital and the commodity fetishism that rules all, especially in America: this is a world where there isn't enough money for all, where the rich get richer and the poor stay where they are, and where the only constant – the Birkin Bag, whose price increases 'every year, regardless of poverty, war, or famine ... Its value more solid than gold or the S&P 500' – is a pyramid scheme.
Zaher's narrator seems to have it all, but she doesn't: despite all this wealth she can't get herself clean, for it is wealth that sustains the dirt thar troubles her and which she spends hours sloughing off her skin in elaborate rituals – she can't control it. And that this destabilisation, this reversal of power structures through humour, satire, and grotesquery, especially bodily, doesn't grant her any actual freedom is key: as the protagonist says to the reader at one point, 'This is not Bakhtin's carnival, this is a centralized nervous system'. That playful, utopian antidote to repression doesn't exist where Zaher is from – far from a wealthy white New Yorker's year of rest and relaxation, her narrator lasts barely eight months in New York, 'less than a baby lasts in its mother's womb'. Instead, her 'malaise' stems from real-life intergenerational and personal trauma, intensified by her proximity to its core, and who is to say her final spiral isn't appropriate response? Indeed, the point is to lead us to ask who can call on the appropriateness of response in the first place.
This is a distinctly Palestinian story, yet distinct from the Palestinian stories we are used to reading, if at all. It is naturally a strange on to read at a time when Palestinian lives are so imperilled, and Zaher is more than aware of it, but she is hardly here speaking in the name of her people. There is a lot here about the messiness of identity, the unruliness of it, and unruliness in general, but at the root of it all is a sharply intelligent story brilliantly told – not one of disaffection, but of morality, control, and most of all, experience.
December 22, 2025
In a world where everything has a price the most important question is what does it truly cost to exist? “The Coin”, by Yasmin Zaher, asks you to search deep down in your morals and find an answer. The book follows a young woman of Palestinian origin living in New York. As the story unfolds she becomes increasingly obsessed with money, beauty and control, affecting the way she processes everything from morals to merely survival. As she navigates elite social spaces, romantic relationships and her painful memories of displacement, her fixation on material goods and wealth turns into a coping mechanism and eventually a form of self destruction. Zaher’s prose is sharp and fearless and on many occasions reminded me the book “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” by Ottessa Moshfegh (yet it wasn’t so good as that book). The main character is complex, highly unlikable and deeply flawed, challenging the reader to sit with discomfort rather than seek easy sympathy. Without being didactic the novel weaves in important questions related to exile, privilege and belonging. And towards the end, it traces the protagonist’s inner world with sharp honesty, revealing how capitalism, trauma and identity often collide.
This is a book about money as a form of power and a way of survival. Possessions that can represent safety, control and self worth in a world that feels unstable and exclusionary. About wealth stereotypes: for example how we think that poor people are dirty and rich people are clean or that the poor are good and the rich evil. Democracy and equal opportunity. Materialism and how it affects your taste. It is also a story about displacement and identity. Missing home and everything we leave behind. About race and racism. Alienation and belonging. Having something important to say but no voice. Doing what you need to get the message across. It is also a book about female desire and self objectification. How beauty is measured under patriarchal and capitalist measures. How women perceive themselves through the eyes of others. About loneliness and obsession. How the latter can replace genuine human connection. The fact that on occasions we pretend we are something we are not. A story about teachers and unorthodox teaching. Ineffective education systems that cannot distinguish between right and wrong. Schools where only violence speaks. Mostly though, this is a book about capitalism and moral erosion. Distortion of values, transactional relationships and emotional numbness. About socioeconomic status, order and social performance. The things we do to feel safe in our natural order. The truths we refuse to acknowledge and the difficulties of being alive among others.
This is a 3-3.5/5 for me!
Why should you read “The Coin”?
Because you will think about cleanliness and beauty standards in a different way.
Because you will realize how you can become a control freak when you feel incapable of controlling important things in your life.
Because you will reflect on the idea that one only belongs to a certain social class based on the way they dress, walk, speak or talk and not based on their wealth.
Because you will accept that whatever you put out to the world comes back to you.
Because you will accept that oppression and generational trauma can affect your daily life in a profound way.
Favourite quotes:
“I’ve always been motivated by pleasure, never by money, because money I had enough of and pleasure one cannot possess”.
“I’m telling you this story as a reminder to myself, as a promise for the future. It’s a promise that nothing lasts, not even you, not even us. No two separate things can be linked forever”.
“The more contradictions in your life, the more complex your identity, the harder your soul, the more difficult it is to love and to be loved”.
This is a book about money as a form of power and a way of survival. Possessions that can represent safety, control and self worth in a world that feels unstable and exclusionary. About wealth stereotypes: for example how we think that poor people are dirty and rich people are clean or that the poor are good and the rich evil. Democracy and equal opportunity. Materialism and how it affects your taste. It is also a story about displacement and identity. Missing home and everything we leave behind. About race and racism. Alienation and belonging. Having something important to say but no voice. Doing what you need to get the message across. It is also a book about female desire and self objectification. How beauty is measured under patriarchal and capitalist measures. How women perceive themselves through the eyes of others. About loneliness and obsession. How the latter can replace genuine human connection. The fact that on occasions we pretend we are something we are not. A story about teachers and unorthodox teaching. Ineffective education systems that cannot distinguish between right and wrong. Schools where only violence speaks. Mostly though, this is a book about capitalism and moral erosion. Distortion of values, transactional relationships and emotional numbness. About socioeconomic status, order and social performance. The things we do to feel safe in our natural order. The truths we refuse to acknowledge and the difficulties of being alive among others.
This is a 3-3.5/5 for me!
Why should you read “The Coin”?
Because you will think about cleanliness and beauty standards in a different way.
Because you will realize how you can become a control freak when you feel incapable of controlling important things in your life.
Because you will reflect on the idea that one only belongs to a certain social class based on the way they dress, walk, speak or talk and not based on their wealth.
Because you will accept that whatever you put out to the world comes back to you.
Because you will accept that oppression and generational trauma can affect your daily life in a profound way.
Favourite quotes:
“I’ve always been motivated by pleasure, never by money, because money I had enough of and pleasure one cannot possess”.
“I’m telling you this story as a reminder to myself, as a promise for the future. It’s a promise that nothing lasts, not even you, not even us. No two separate things can be linked forever”.
“The more contradictions in your life, the more complex your identity, the harder your soul, the more difficult it is to love and to be loved”.
June 29, 2025
This was kinda all over the place and not in a cohesive or clever way. That’s not a diss, it’s how I feel. This novel is entertaining and bonkers, but doesn’t really go anywhere impactful or memorable. It’s not satisfying, although I do think it’s gutsy to keep several resolutions at bay. Boss move, I guess.
The trauma of displacement is an underlying theme here, but its exploitation merely scratches the surface; it feels shoehorned into the narrative. I’m all for the “women unhinged” genre, but this take felt like it was all tricks and no substance.
I ain’t mad I read it though. It was fun in the moment.
The trauma of displacement is an underlying theme here, but its exploitation merely scratches the surface; it feels shoehorned into the narrative. I’m all for the “women unhinged” genre, but this take felt like it was all tricks and no substance.
I ain’t mad I read it though. It was fun in the moment.
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