The Coin

Yasmin Zaher’s debut, The Coin, is a surreal trip of a novel about one woman’s pain and isolation, along with her compulsive cleaning obsession and Birkin bag-selling scheme. The protagonist is a wealthy Palestinian woman living in Brooklyn whose inheritance is all tied up. Despite the couture hanging in her closet, she is forced to live on a small, monthly stipend doled out by her older brother and she works as a schoolteacher in a city that is covered in inescapable grime. The emotional turmoil of her homeland is catching up with her, and she starts to unravel. Suddenly, she’s imparting unorthodox wisdom to her middle-school students and embarking on the Sisyphean task of cleansing herself of the filth that follows her everywhere. In a battle against chaos and consumerism, the narrator becomes obsessed with purity and a desire to find some semblance of control in an overwhelming world.

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