The Coin
Alum - Creative Writing at The New School
Catapult , 2024
“[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
“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, Los Angeles Times
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 an intercontinental scheme reselling Birkin bags.
But America is stifling her—her willfulness, her sexuality, her principles. 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 civilization, beauty and justice, class and belonging—all while resisting easy moralizing. Provocative, wry, and inviting, The Coin marks the arrival of a major new literary voice.