Why read The Coin?

Book cover of The Coin

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'A masterpiece' Slavoj Zizek

'A filthy, elegant book' Raven Leilani

'Glamorous and sordid' Elif Batuman

'Chipping away at Western hegemony one scalped it-bag at a time' New York Times

'A brilliant, audacious, powerhouse of a novel ... deliciously unruly' Katie Kitamura

A bold and unabashed novel about a young Palestinian…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Coin as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Sommer Schafer

Author

I feel that we live in a society that puts too much time and attention on women’s bodies. One way that women writers can take the female body back, I think, is to show how women’s bodies often become reflective of what they are experiencing emotionally and mentally.

I love this novel because it doesn’t shy away from showing a protagonist who obsesses about cleaning and managing her body as a way to deal with the trauma of losing her parents while living in Palestine and subsequently immigrating to the U.S. I also love the prose—the sentences are short and…

From Sommer's list on The best books of fiction that feature “unlikeable” women in fantastical and everyday situations.