April Book Club - The Coin

Join us this month to discuss The Coin at our April book club! 

When: 30/4/26 18:00 start, doors open from 17:50

OR 2/5/26 10:00 start, doors open from 9:50

Where: 26a Crwys Road, CF24 4NL

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You can order the book here to pick up from the shop. 

The Coin - £9.99

Book club discount, 10% off - £8.99

Tickets to the book club are free but we would like you to register so that we can keep track of numbers. As it is a free event we would appreciate if you bought the book from us as that allows us to keep running events like this. However if you have a copy already feel free to sign up for just a ticket.

If you would like to book a place but you already have the book you can do that here.

Once you have signed up we will send you an email confirmation (this is separate to the automatic email from Shopify to confirm payment). We will then send an email when the book is ready to pick up. This may be included in the initial email if we already have the stock.

Translated fiction book club runs every other month, the months in between we have a general book club. 

About the book:

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.

About the author:

Yasmin Zaher is a Palestinian writer and journalist. She got her B.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering at Yale University and an MFA in Creative Writing at The New School, where she was advised by Katie Kitamura. She lives in Paris.

Accessibility:

We ask in our confirmation email if you have any access needs, we will do everything we can to accommodate them. If you would like to reach out before booking you can email us lily@bookspacecardiff.co.uk or use our contact form.

We are wheelchair accessible. We have a tempory ramp we can put out to get in over the small step and once inside the shop floor is even. If you want to find out more about how to get here, check out our about page.