The Coin

MORE ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THE COIN

A Vulture Most Anticipated Book of the Year

A Marie Claire Most Anticipated Book of the Year

An Electric Literature Most Anticipated Book of the Year

A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of the Year

A Ms. Magazine Most Anticipated Book of the Year

A Bookshop Most Anticipated Title of the Year

“In her debut novel, Zaher draws a Venn diagram of the glamorously neurotic and the politically oppressed, then sets her protagonist spinning in that maddening little overlap.”

—Madeline Leung Coleman, Vulture

“I loved this bonkers novel. I was hooked by the voice, and mesmerized by the glamorous and sordid hijinks. I have never read such a strange and recognizable representation of post-2016 New York City, its luxury and squalor. Zaher is a writer to watch.”

—Elif Batuman, author of Either/Or and The Idiot 

“A very stylish novel that manages to broach class and statelessness with tact and humor, while also touching on beauty, sex, love and the nature of civilization itself, all from a Palestinian debut novelist.”

—Literary Hub

“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

"The Coin is marvellous, absolutely mental, and full of pleasurable surprises. I read it in a flash. What an entrance.”

—Isabella Hammad, author of Enter Ghost and The Parisian 

“The Coin is a taut, caustic wonder. Like Jean Rhys, Yasmin Zaher captures the outrageous loneliness of contemporary life, the gradual and total displacement of the human heart. This is a novel of wealth, filth, beauty, and grief told in clarion prose and with unbearable suspense. I was in its clutches from the first page.”

—Hilary Leichter, author of Terrace Story and Temporary

“Yasmin Zaher must have used electric ink to write this book. It is charged with such strangeness and humor; it glows with disobedience. A marvelous novel.”

—Ayşegül Savaş, author of White on White and Walking on the Ceiling

“Yasmin Zaher’s The Coin does much more than meet the highest standards of literature: it sets its own standards. It combines into a single flow intimate bodily observations with repetitive daily routines, fashion and food, love and friendship with delicate power plays, crumbling authority with justice, all of it against the background of global violence. And should we really be surprised that it was a young Israeli Palestinian who performed this miracle? Those who dismiss Palestinians as the violent Other of the Western civilization will discover that a Palestinian can see the truth of our messy world better than ourselves. The Coin is not a wonderful beginning that promises masterpieces to come – it already is a masterpiece.”

—Slavoj Žižek