Yasmin Zaher has been announced as the 2025 winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize for her debut novel The Coin. The Dylan Thomas Prize recognises exceptional literary talent from emerging international writers aged 39 years or under, writing in any form including poetry, short stories, novels or drama.
Yasmin Zaher, a Palestinian journalist, was unanimously chosen by the judges as the 2025 winner; judging chair Namita Gokhale described The Coin as 'a borderless novel, tackling trauma and grief with bold and poetic moments of quirkiness and humour'. The Coin was published in the US in 2024, and will be available in Australia in late 2025.
The Winner of the 2025 Dylan Thomas Prize
The Coin
Yasmin Zaher
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 a pyramid scheme reselling Birkin bags.
But America is stifling her – her wilfulness, 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 civilisation, beauty and justice, class and belonging – all while resisting easy moralising. Provocative, wry and inviting, The Coin marks the arrival of a major new literary voice.
Due for publication in Australia in September 2025
The 2025 shortlist for the Dylan Thomas Prize also included The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden, Rapture’s Road by Seán Hewitt, Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon, I Will Crash by Rebecca Watson and Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good by Eley Williams.
You can read more about the prize and the judges' selection here.
