In The Coin, Yasmin Zaher’s novel about a young Palestinian woman doing her best to build a life that works for her in New York City, cleanliness is, indeed, close to godliness. Zaher’s narrator becomes obsessed with spotlessness and purity even as she gets sucked further and further into chaos while balancing her job teaching at a school for underprivileged boys with her side hustle, illegally reselling Birkin bags.
The Coin feels like a distinctly Palestinian novel—concerning itself, as it does, with its narrator’s statelessness and increasing sense of isolation—but as the news out of Gazajust keeps getting worse, 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, an educator doing her (sometimes-flawed) best …